Big-hearted baboon

Big-hearted baboon

Untamed Heart

Directed by Tony Bill

Starring Christian Slater, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez

Rated M. At Village and Hoyts

Reviewed by Ulrike Erhardt

A love story in the old-fashioned sense of devotion — a pleasant change from the usual fare of maniacal happenings involving people we would rather not live with.

Adam (Christian Slater) is a little orphan boy with a weak heart. He is brought up in isolation by nuns who attempt to make life easier for him by telling him a heroic story about his different heart. They claim that his explorer father had given him a baboon heart after an accident in the jungle, where he died soon after. Not wanting to let go of the only thing connecting him with his dead father, Adam later in life refuses a heart transplant.

Years later Caroline (Marisa Tomei), a waitress in a Minneapolis diner, abandoned by her latest boyfriend, is also suffering from a broken heart. In the same diner Adam works as a busboy, and he is smitten with Caroline. It's obvious that these two hearts need mending.

Matters are complicated because Adam isn't the talkative type. Is outgoing, ambitious and street smart Caroline a match for Adam, the gentle, shy misfit? Find out for yourself whether opposites attract.

Untamed Heart catapults us back to times when things were uncomplicated — those wonderful moments when everything is anticipation and one hasn't gotten to know one's partner yet.

From GLW issue 105