Heartless

This fiercely imaginative ‘urban fairy tale’ from multitalented East End fabulist Philip Ridley, creator of ‘The Reflecting Skin’ and ‘The Passion of Darkly Noon’, juxtaposes familiar Bethnal Green settings, fairy tales, disturbing violence and bleak, surreal humour. Jamie (Jim Sturgess, below), a melancholy 25-year-old photographer with a heart-shaped port-wine birthmark on his face, starts to believe that the masked ‘hoodies’ prowling the streets are actual demons. His shy, tentative love for the fragile Tia (Clémence Poésy) offers a ray of hope, but his Faustian pact with the charismatic Papa B (Joseph Mawle) – the self-styled ‘patron saint of random violence’ – plunges Jamie into a frightening world of chaos. By showing us these bizarre events from Jamie’s point of view, Ridley forces us to share his hallucinatory vision of an apocalyptic world. The ever-brilliant Eddie Marsan contributes a darkly hilarious cameo as the enigmatic Weapons Man, and Ridley’s coup de grace is a quiet, emotionally charged ending  as surprising as it is bold.