Oliver Kolker’s Spanish-language movie, I Had The Heart, engages all the senses. A drama from Argentina with pronounced musical elements, it takes place in Buenos Aires as a handicapped mechanic rises to stardom as a tango singer.
It will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which gets underway on June 4 and runs until June 14.
The central character, Bartolo (Walter Laborde), is a car mechanic whose talents are spotted by Moti Cohen (Oliver Kolker), a Jewish music producer whose career is on the rocks.
Bartolo is an unusual individual. He stutters. Stuttering is an affliction that affects only one percent of a population, and such people are rarely seen in movies.
When Bartolo sings, his stammer magically disappears, a common enough phenomenon in this group. Cohen is unusual inasmuch as he does not focus on Bartolo’s disability. He can see past it. He recognizes Bartolo as a talented singer, period.
Cohen, whose grandfather was a tango musician, is no fan of this highly stylized and passionate ballroom dance, which is characterized by melancholic music, intricate footwork, close embraces and dramatic pauses. When he was younger, Cohen did not appreciate its beauty and made his name as a rock producer, judging by flashbacks dating back to 1973.
Now, decades later, Cohen accidentally stumbles upon tango when he brings his car into a garage to be fixed. By chance, Cohen hears Bartolo singing during one of his breaks, and he is impressed by the strength and range of his voice. “He’s a hidden gem,” he says in awe.
Cohen’s find is serendipitous. His boss happens to be looking for a suitable singer for an upcoming tango festival. Bartolo fits the bill in every respect, except for his stutter. When a female singer meets him, she advises Bartolo to relax, not realizing that stuttering is unconnected to nervousness. After he belts out a song, she exclaims, “Bartolo is amazing, he touches your soul.”
When Cohen tells a colleague about Bartolo, he is skeptical. “He’s a nobody,” he says, falling into the trap of underestimating a person who stammers.
Laborde is superb as Bartolo. He delivers a nuanced performance as a person struggling to overcome a handicap and prove his worth as an entertainer. Kolker, the film’s co-director along with Hernan Findling, is similarly convincing as a producer trying to promote a singer who has been typecast as a loser.
Bartolo, in his debut appearance in a senior home, stutters, but Cohen does not give up on him. He organizes a band for him and chooses Bartolo’s stepfather, an accordion player, as one of its musicians.
Despite Bartolo’s ensuing success, his stuttering continues to haunt him. Some people in night clubs and at concerts poke fun at him, possibly because his team has marketed him as the Magical Stutterer.
Bartolo’s ascent to fame unfolds as Cohen’s 13-year-old son, Noah, studies for his Bar Mitzvah and as his ex-wife, Hannah (Anita Martinez), prepares to immigrate to Israel.
I Had The Heart, whose title derives from a song Bartolo regularly performs, is an uplifting and appealing film about the perils of adversity and the joy of success.