Listen to your heart

The 25th Annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival may be over, but that doesn’t mean the movie reviews are done too.  There were some real good movies there this year and there were some NOT so great, but the best one would have to be “Listen to Your Heart” which was shown during the final weekend of the festival and went on to win the Audience Award for Best Film.

An aspiring songwriter, Danny (Kent Moran) who works in a Manhattan restaurant, meets a beautiful woman, Ariana (Alexia Rasmussen) who comes in for lunch one day with her mother, Victoria (Cybill Shepherd).  It is love at first sight for Danny.  Naturally, there are complications.  First of which, Alexia is deaf.  If that wasn’t hard enough, Alexia comes from a very well to do family, and Victory certainly is not going to let her only daughter end up with deadbeat waiter.

Kent revealed during a Q&A session at FLIFF that he wrote the entire screenplay in a matter of days.  The finished product is very tight and an endearing love story.  The “poor boy meets and falls in love with rich girl” story has been done many times over, but “Listen to your Heart” has a few surprises up its sleeve.

Newcomers Rasmussen and Moran have great chemistry on screen; from the very first moment in the movie when the two characters meet you can feel the electricity between them.  The two young stars each bring some powerful performances and look to have promising careers ahead of them.  Cybill Shepherd is fantastic as that rich, snobbish mother audiences love to hate.  It’s easy to see how she was attracted to the role of this independent film and she does a great job with the character.

Two technical aspects that must be brought up are the cinematography and the music.  Chase Bowman does superb job capturing the action on screen and the many sights surrounding New York City.  Kent Moran was also responsible for the music in the movie.  Both the score and the original songs sung in the movie are what are helping this movie capturing the hearts of audiences catching this movie at films festivals across the country.

The movie is almost flawless.  If you want to nip-pick there are a moment or two when Danny is talking to Ariana when she is not looking at him, but still responds to what he just said, but only if you are someone like Victoria should something so small upset you.  The movie is available through Amazon.com and is worth buying for someone you want to curl up on the couch with and watch a great romantic film.