Quite an impressive short film from Khavn, who is considered the father of the digital filmmaking in the Philippines. Furthermore, Khavn is quite an artist, as he is also an award-winning poet and novelist, an acclaimed composer, songwriter, singer and pianist and leader of a band named Brockas. In this particular short, he also enlisted the cinematographer Christopher Doyle (“In the Mood For Love”, “Hero”) and Tadanobu Asano, thus resulting in an impressive production.
The film takes place in Manila, where a crime boss (aka The GodFather) rules by using a poet who recites religious poems in order to lure customers, although he frequently resorts to violence by unleashing his numerous henchmen. At one point, he assigns his most trusted one (aka The Criminal) to guard a whore of his (aka The Prostitute). Eventually however, and as the title so eloquently states, they fall in love with each other and try to run away, while the rest of the gang is on their heels.
Khavn shot the 73-minute film in utter guerrilla fashion, in 4 days and in six different places in the metropolitan Manila. Having just a little more than one hour to incorporate his ideas in the film, he does not waste any time and the initial scene of the film presents the story through a number of newspaper headlines. Subsequently he makes an artistic presentation of the protagonists, one by one.
Although the story eventually becomes clear, the narration is by no means traditional and actually looks like a collage of the director’s notions. In that fashion, the spectator becomes witness to a scene in a brothel where everybody has sex while a band is playing live, a sex scene that includes a phonebook and a picture of the Madonna, and constant changes between tranquility and rapid scenes of chasing and violence. The dialogues are quite scarce and have been replaced by a plethora of perpetually altering songs, as music is actually one of the protagonists of a film that quite often looks like a video clip.
Asano is once more utterly smooth even when he wears a horse head as a costume, while the scene when he dances to “She Said” is one of the most enjoyable in the movie
The cinematography is expectantly sublime, with Doyle portraying the areas around Manila in astonishing fashion and detail.
“Ruined Heart”is a highly artistic film that manages to exact the best by its entire staff.
