One from the Heart

Francis Ford Coppola's romantic comedy/musical/drama picture is usually hanging around on Netflix Instant, although they take it off now and then just to put it back on (who can study the vagaries of why something is on Netflix Instant?). Anyway, I finally watched it recently, and...

It's one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, made weirder by the fact that Coppola directed it. I don't have anything against the film's star Frederic Forrest, but although he was a jobbing actor in a couple of important movies throughout the seventies and eighties he never really became a star, so his presence in this curiosity feels odd. Teri Garr and Raul Julia, on the other hand, are super sexy in the movie, but One from the Heart is self-consciously theatrical and also depressing. There's a lot of yelling, a lot of fighting, and the entire thing – and this is probably its weirdest attribute – is shot on a sound stage. The whole thing is so odd. The main song, by Tom Waits (and sung by Waits and Crystal Gale) is actually really great, but it is strange too, especially because I find it gets stuck in my head now whenever I see the title of this movie. In any case, this is weird. I don't recommend it, per se, but it was an interesting early '80s filmic experiment.