MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Heart’: A Love Story With Heartfelt Hokum

Caroline (Marisa Tomei) is a Minneapolis waitress who can’t quite disguise her yearning heart. When we first see her, primping for a date with her steady, she seems like the kind of pert chickadee who wouldn’t look out of place in any mall in America. But then she’s dumped by her boyfriend in the very next scene, and her bubbliness pops. It’s not just that she’s been rejected; it’s as if her soul has been rejected. Her sudden deep-down sadness enlarges our perception of Caroline and makes us ashamed of having “typed” her as just another bimbette.

This scene is a clue to what’s best about “Untamed Heart” (citywide), the romantic drama directed by Tony Bill and written by Tom Sierchio. By all rights, a movie about a girl who finds true love with an orphaned busboy (Christian Slater) who needs a heart transplant should be a hoot. It’s a unique premise--that doesn’t mean it’s a good premise. And swatches of the film are indeed as goopy as one might fear.

But what keeps the film together is Tomei’s performance, and Bill’s recognition that the emotions she’s calling up are the real thing. She pulls you into Caroline’s spunky despair without ever condescending to the character. “Untamed Heart” may be one of those “little people” love stories but we never think of Caroline in such terms. She’s an original because Tomei brings a new-minted freshness to every moment, every gesture.

The scenes in the diner, with Caroline gabbing and roughhousing with her best buddy Cindy (the always spunky Rosie Perez), have an easygoing charm that captures the way people can turn their jobs into cabaret--as a way of keeping sane. Adam, the busboy who, unbeknown to her, follows her home every night, is barely communicative. He seems puppyish: feral but non-threatening. When they finally discover that they were made for each other, the romance acquires “Beauty and the Beast” vibes. The film (rated PG-13 for strong language, violence and sensuality) becomes a young girl’s fantasy about a scruffy Prince Charming whose heart is literally breaking.

Bill tries for a fantasyland atmosphere without going in for a lot of gauze and shimmer. It’s a difficult hat trick, and he doesn’t quite succeed. The script calls for the kind of magical stylization that might undercut the hokum. What we get instead is heartfelt hokum--that’s nothing to sneeze at but it’s not magical either. Putting Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy” on the soundtrack and setting the film in a kind of time-warp Minneapolis don’t send us into the sort of swoon that can get us over lines such as “If they take away my heart I won’t be able to love you the same.” And the tone of wide-eyed, overwrought tenderness doesn’t really do justice to the story’s more disturbing aspects either, which, at such times as when Adam describes how he watched Caroline asleep at night in her room without her knowing it, recall Carson McCullers a lot more than Hans Christian Andersen.

Slater does an impressive job of burying most of his Christian Slater-isms. Gone are the wily Jack Nicholson-ish line readings and smart-aleck scruffiness. If he doesn’t quite emerge as a flesh-and-blood character it’s because he’s essentially a romantic image--a projection of Caroline’s devotion. In a sense, Slater’s performance is fixed by Tomei’s. Her rapture gives his presence a nimbus.

Audiences who know Tomei from her delicately raucous work in “My Cousin Vinny” will hardly recognize her here. She’s the kind of actress who doesn’t let you see the technique or the sophistication in back of the performance. She can play an adoring passion-flower like Caroline and her innocence never seems forced in any way. Tomei has a quality in this film that some of the best silent actresses had: She seems maidenly without seeming insubstantial. Her ardor is her ballast. She keeps the movie honest.

‘Untamed Heart’

Christian Slater: Adam

Marisa Tomei: Caroline

Rosie Perez: Cindy

Kyle Secor: Howard

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presentation of a Tony Bill Film. Director Tony Bill. Producers Tony Bill and Helen Buck Bartlett. Executive producer J. Boyce Harman, Jr. Screenplay by Tom Sierchio. Cinematographer Jost Jacano. Editor Mia Goldman. Costumes Lynn Bernay. Music Cliff Eidelman. Production design Steven Jordan. Art director Jack D. L. Ballance. Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13 (strong violence, language, sensuality).