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.