User Reviews

Made in Brighton for peanuts, All Heart marks the feature debut of writer/ director Tim Pieraccini and succeeds where many infinitely better resourced films fail.

The film follows Hazel - a stressed student struggling to find her identity as she starts to question the course her life has taken. As in real life, there are no easy answers as friends, mentors and potential love interests (the film's protagonists being played by a uniformly excellent all-female ensemble cast) muddle their way from trial to tribulation, each one searching for their own happy ending.

The start point for any film of quality must be a quality script, and in this department the first-time writer has delivered a script that is by turns witty, charming and insightful. But while the script provides the framework for the film, much of the credit must go to the cast whose endeavours elevate All Heart above the usual zero budget fare.

Thoroughly engaging from start to finish, All Heart is a well played and delightful testament to the power and fragility of the human spirit.

It seems incredible that in this day and age, the simple act of being able to make a film with an entirely female cast should still be regarded as a achievement, and yet an achievement it is. Writer and director Tim Pieraccini has been able to craft a story for an entirely female company with a skill which means that this never feels like a statement or a casting policy for the sake of it or some odd alternative universe where men don't exist. It simply feels like real life, to the extent that if you didn't go into the thing knowing there were no men in the film, it's probably not something that would particularly strike you unless it was pointed out.

There can perhaps be a perception that films of this type can run the risk of looking like little more than messing about with a camcorder, but All Heart is not so much a cut as an entire packet of razor blades above this level. While its story may be intimate and dialogue based rather than from the cinematic school of telling stories through pictures and to tell with the words, not being a particular film buff myself and coming more from a background of enjoying television drama and novels, this was very much to my taste.

I'd very much recommend this film to anyone who wants something with a bit of thought in it, or to aspiring film-makers wanting to know how they can make a very little, budget-wise, go a very long way.