Hearts of Palm (2016)

• 70%
• 2016
• Monica Peña
• Megan Galizia
• Eloisa Garcia
• Brad Lovett

A seemingly idyllic afternoon sharing ripe fruit in the garden decays into a ritualistic end for El and Ella. As the couple spend a day (or years) in their home - which seems to breathe with a life all its own - their languid ennui becomes as slow and suffocating as the tropical air around them. When strange occurrences take on supernatural tones, El and Ella escape to a local botanica for guidance, only to be greeted with real life Santeria. What follows is an unnerving fever dream as the mysterious Niño Bueno conjures otherworldly forces, leading the couple to their inevitable fate. An experimental narrative using documentary techniques, Hearts of Palm draws from the storied love affairs between creative partners - like Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, and the filmmaker's own. Her literal (and literary) voice intersects with her aesthetic voice, creating narrative layers where truth willfully seeps through the veil of myth. In the end, the rituals within Hearts of Palm seem to be contained only by the ritual of filmmaking itself, like a deeply embedded spiritual memory.