GOOD HEART, THE

Category: Feature Film
Director: Dagur Kári
Country: Iceland, Denmark, France, Germany
Year: 2009
Length: 90'
Production Status: completed

Summary

Lucas is a good-hearted young man who has come to an existential dead-end. He is homeless, living in a cardboard box under the Brooklyn Bridge. With a total lack of prospects for the future, Lucas tries to commit suicide, but the attempt is a failure like everything in his life...

Recuperating in hospital, Lucas is forced to share a room with Jacques, a grouchy bar-owner whose choleric demeanour and less-than-healthy lifestyle have resulted in no fewer than five heart attacks. With no family or friends and a risk of passing away any day, Jacques takes Lucas under his battered wing with the intention of passing on his legacy.

Lucas begins a strange education: he must learn how to make the perfect espresso and to adopt Jacques' many bizarre philosophies.

Champagne, for example, is strictly for celebrating sporting victories, and never for seducing women. And, with the exception of the oddball regulars, no one is welcome in Jacques? bar.

Lucas moves in and very much against the odds, the two men form a quirky friendship. Everything seems to be going according to Jacques' plan?

Until the rainy night when April, a drunken stewardess who is terrified of flying, strays into the bar. Jacques is out and Lucas can't turn this beautiful stranger away. She winds up staying in Lucas´ bed and drinking Jacques' champagne, both of which make the old man furious. April convinces the captivated Lucas that they should marry.

And that's when things start to get really strange.