Heart of Midnight (film)

Plot

Carol (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a young woman recovering from her recent, although not the first, nervous breakdown. She has just inherited Midnight, an abandoned nightclub in a seedy neighbourhood that was previously owned by her recently deceased mysterious uncle Fletcher (Sam Schacht). She moves out of the home of her trashy mother Betty (Brenda Vaccaro) and into the nightclub and starts renovating it in hopes of re-opening it. She discovers a secret section of the club that was used as a brothel catering to clients with sexually perverted tendencies.

Carol becomes a victim of rape at the hands of three intruders who are let into the club under mysterious circumstances. Due to her history of psychological problems, the police have difficulty believing that what she's telling them is the truth. She makes a friend in Lieutenant Sharpe (Peter Coyote), a detective who claims to have been sent in to investigate the break-in and who seems to believe her story. Sharpe is later revealed to be an impostor who was previously imprisoned because of Carol's uncle Fletcher.

Cast and characters

Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics with some praising the filmmaking and acting while others criticized the storytelling. Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film two and a half stars out of four and proclaimed that "Chapman is a better director than he is a writer" as well as concluding that "I am not sure he knows where he's going with this film, but he gets there in style." Vincent Canby of The New York Times stated that "the dialogue is clumsy and the suspense is nil" and gave his reason for this by explaining that Carol is a "young woman who may or may not be crazy. This gives the director license to be bizarre without having to justify anything." Variety magazine noted in its review that the "performances are strong all around, particularly by Leigh and Vaccaro." Hal Hinson of The Washington Post noted that the storytelling is "haute macabre and hopelessly silly" but, at the same time, admits that "Leigh is a marvel." In spite of the generally agreed upon consensus that the story of the film was flawed, it still managed to win the Best Film award at 1989's Festival de Cine de Sitges.