Starring: Sam Claflin, Veronica Echegui, Fernando Beceril, Ruy Gaytan, Horacio Villalobos, Horacio Garcia Rojas, Lucy Punch
Distributor: StudioCanal
Runtime: 106 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Henry Copper has written a rather abstract and philosophical novel which nobody wants to read – The Sensible Heart. However, his Mexican translator has more than spiced it up and Henry is sent on a publicity tour which changes or, as he says, ‘re-writes his life’.
What would happen if a serious novel about love, rather abstract and philosophical, not selling at all in the UK, was translated into Spanish and reached the Mexican bestseller list? Its ominous title is The Sensible Heart. We would want to know why – and, the answer is that the translator spiced it up (understatement) and omitted the boring parts. And what would happen to the serious novelist on discovering what had happened – after being sent by the publishers on a Mexican tour?
And the answers to these questions are what we see and sharing.
The basic premise is obvious and one-note. However, the screenplay unfolds in a way that perhaps we might have written that had we been commissioned. Which means that we probably like it. It is light-hearted – light-headed. It is an amusement not to be taken too seriously.
Sam Claflin plays the hapless novelist, Henry Copper (always confused with Cooper). He has taken some years to write his rather introspective novel about the theories of love, from his head rather than from experience. No wonder the few people at his novel reading walk out and the booksellers quip ‘get three when you buy one’!
Henry is rather overwhelmed by Jen, the ultra-exuberant opportunist publicist, played with verve by Lucy Punch.
So, off to Mexico to find out why his book has become a best seller. He is whisked from the airport by the translator, Maria (Echegui), her grandfather and her little son, chaperones for her travel. (She actually has a husband who is hopeless, turns up now and again, and is jealous of her.) And, almost immediately, Henry is whisked again to press conference with absolutely adoring fans, men and women.
(This reviewer happened to see Lady Boss, the Jackie Collins Story at the same time as Book of Love – some remarkably similar sequences and experiences, fans, TV interviews, the high life, except that this is all that Jackie Collins wrote and hoped for).
We know was where this is all going, especially if we were to write it ourselves. Henry will mellow. Maria will be always in charge, dominating Henry. They will be urged to write another novel together which leads to clashes, interventions by Maria’s husband, Henry disappointed. But, a nice ending with her son. There will also be a sequence where they walk and talk together, being honest with each other, she challenging about his isolation and inexperience, he succumbing to love.
Of course, there is a happy ending (absurd to think otherwise). Maria’s husband makes a fool of himself intervening at a press conference, Maria comes to the rescue with translating again as Henry returns to Mexico.
What happens, he explains to the fans, is that Maria in re-writing the novel ‘re-wrote his life’.
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