The Heart Knows Review: After Juan Manuel has a heart transplant, he goes through a personality shift that makes him explore his donor’s life. This brings him closer to his widow, Valeria, and his community, which he finds himself entangled in. Without telling Valeria the truth behind his intentions, he decides to fight for her and Pedro’s neighbourhood, falling in love in the process.
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The Heart Knows Netflix Cast
Benjamín Vicuña, Julieta Díaz, Peto Menahem, Gloria Carrá, Julia Calvo, Yayo Guridi, Bicho Gómez, Facundo Espinosa, Verónica Hassan
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The Heart Knows Movie Writer & Director
Marcos Carnevale
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AKA
Corazón delator
The film has a runtime of 89 minutes.
The Heart Knows Review
In movies, people who receive a heart transplant somehow slowly become the person from whom they get their new heart. It’s a tale as old as time, so much so that viewers will be able to spot all the cliches from a mile away. But that’s okay, rom-coms are supposed to feel familiar, warm and sweet, taking us on a journey of bubbling feelings and stolen glances, regardless of how familiar it feels. Or maybe the familiarity is a part of the fun.
However, The Heart Knows, the latest romantic drama on Netflix, is a bland showcase of a tired cliche where a rude and annoying Juan Manuel has a change of personality after he gets Pedro’s heart and then falls for his widow. He also becomes a social activist. I am unsure why Juan Manuel will turn into Pedro, considering the heart is an organ that pumps blood and little else, but I will stop that line of thinking lest someone calls me unromantic.
The problem with this movie is not that – it’s that we don’t believe Pedro’s new personality, and neither do we believe the romance. The biggest task of any movie, regardless of whether it’s extremely realistic or not, is that the audience needs to believe whatever is being thrown at them. I am all about believing that a heart transplant slowly turns Juan Manuel into Pedro, but the film must make me believe it because otherwise, it just seems silly. The Heart Knows misses out on that, spinning the perfect story and characters in such a way that we believe in its central plot.
Pedro Manuel, despite his radical change, still feels like a smug a*shole as he apparently can’t wrap his head around the fact that normal people have to take public transport to move around and that not everyone has an Audi. Anyway, the film is boring, and I didn’t feel the spark between Juan Manuel and Valeria at all, nor did I feel particularly excited for Juan Manuel’s newfound motivations to do something good for the community. It feels sudden and forced, and his heart doesn’t seem to be too into it (pun intended).
This isn’t an insult to Julieta Díaz, though. I loved her in the movie. However, Benjamín Vicuña’s Juan Manuel doesn’t seem to have the change of heart that we are meant to feel, and I think that’s because of a mixture of a very bland character and Vicuña not having much to work with. I think the characters in general are very bland and one-dimensional, but Díaz has a hidden sadness behind her eyes that is not easy to ignore.
Final Thoughts
The Heart Knows is very boring because the story is extremely clichéd, and the characters are thoroughly one-dimensional. There’s nothing to hold the audience to the story here, and it shows in every scene.
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