Eliseo Subiela's 1992 film The Dark Side of the Heart is an intoxicating mix of poetry, eroticism, and comic absurdity. The Argentine director, well known for such surrealistic films as Man Facing Southeast and The Last Images of the Shipwreck, outdoes expectations in Dark Side with more and better Latin-American style magic realism. The film has everything: lovers that levitate, a character having a conversation with a cow that represents his mother, talking to his other self that he keeps locked in a closet, having a heart-to-heart chat with the personification of Death (Nacha Guevara), and a love scene depicted as a roller coaster ride.
Oliverio (Dario GrandinettI), a handsome poet seeks out the perfect woman, the girl that can fly. "I don't give a damn if a woman's breasts are like magnolias or figs," he says, "if her skin feels like peach or sandpaper ... {but} on no account whatsoever will I forgive a woman who cannot fly." Those that do not fulfill his standards are summarily dismissed. With the push of a button, a trap door opens on their side of the bed, sending them falling into the abyss. Living the life of an artist in Buenos Aires, Oliverio is self-absorbed to the point of narcissism and the film looks at the world mostly from his (the male) point of view. He spends his days looking for a handout by reciting lines of his poetry to motorists and to restaurant owners in search of a free meal.
Oliverio has a friend Gustavo (André Mélancon) who insists on displaying his erotic sculptures in public but has to repeatedly bail him out of jail. The would-be poet travels to Montevideo in Uruguay where he finds Ana (Sandra Ballestros), a prostitute he tries to seduce by reciting the poetry of Mario Benedetti, only to find that she knows the poems as well as he. Refusing to fall for his too obvious come-ons, Ana is all business and rejects his obsessive pleas for romance. There's a little bit of politics as well, as Ana tells him that her husband was arrested and "disappeared" by Argentina's former dictatorship. Much to his surprise, he finds himself falling in love with Ana and pursues her until they can levitate together, soaring over tall buildings into the night sky. What better way is there to express love?
