Not a film for everyone. If you are squeamish about children being placed in danger then do not see this film.

The Heart Is Deceitful has a daring that's hard to dismiss, even when it only amounts to Argento shamelessly getting off on human rot.

This is an unpleasant film, but Argento, whose bloodline positively seethes with unpleasantness, is, in her own right, a master cinematic stylist of the first order.

The results are shapeless, excessively lurid and often unpleasant, with Argento shamelessly vamping the white-trash junkie mother and truck-stop hooker. She apparently forgot whose story she was telling.

Given Argento's willingness to attempt the controversial book at all, she pulls a surprising number of punches. What at first appears to go too far in reality doesn't go far enough: Argento doesn't even broach the subject of child prostitution.

My two-star rating represents a compromise between admiration and horror.

There is some directorial skill here--Argento should be congratulated for a few interesting storytelling choices--but the end result feels grimy and strangely pathetic.

Asia Argento is not what I would call a good actress, but she's a prime specimen of train-wreck sexuality: a debauched Eurotrash starlet who oozes punk cred more than she does talent. It's not too hard to see why she wanted to write, direct, and star in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.

Though it's decidedly for perverse palates, some kind of cult audience seems assured for this one-note onslaught, which exercises a bizarre fascination despite its excesses.

Whatever her limitations, Argento the actor makes certain that Argento the director doesn't lack for "action"--and that the audience doesn't lack for pain.

An almost comically lurid tale of a little boy abused by his malignant hooker mother, malignant fundamentalist grandfather, and malignant surrogate dads.

The performances by all three children are scarily convincing. Still, it's a taxing bit of exploitation, which, although you're glad to know it's a work of fiction, doesn't exactly make a case for itself as art.

This is an execrable movie depicting the improbable events in the life of a young boy being intermittently raised by his crackhead, highway-hookin' mom (actress-director Asia Argento, with a face that makes Courtney Love's mug shot look glamorous), her plumb-nuts evangelical parents and a cartoonishly incompetent West Virginia social system.

Watchable in a train-wreck kind of way, but you'll probably want to take a shower afterwards.