"Untamed Heart" (1992): What Works/What Doesn't

Remember that film about the guy with the baboon's heart?

Synopsis - A Tearjerker Love Story

The mysterious Adam (Christian Slater) is a busboy at the Minneapolis diner where his crush, the beautiful and out-of-his-league Caroline (Marisa Tomei) works as a waitress. Adam is perceived to be a mute, until one day, after Caroline is assaulted he starts talking to her, albeit very slowly and cautiously. Adam also saves Caroline from getting raped by her attackers and they form a friendship which gives way to romance. External forces, however, work to drive them apart. Caroline’s cousin and close friend, Cindy (Rosie Perez), also a waitress at the diner, gives her a hard time about being with Adam, refusing to take the relationship seriously. Then there’s Adam’s untreated heart condition which might be the biggest obstacle, of them all.

The working titles for the film were, Baboon Heart and Someone to Love according to the AFI and Adam believes his heart is that of a baboon because as an orphan, a nun told him a pretty far-fetched origin story.

Fun Fact: The baboon heart story has taken on urban legend seismic proportions over the years. It’s based on Baby Fae, an infant who was born with a heart defect and became the first successful infant recipient of a heart transplant. Famously, the heart used came from a baboon. As Wikipedia notes, “Though she died within a month of the procedure, she lived weeks longer than any previous recipient of a non-human heart.”

Characters (That Work)

• Minneapolis, Minnesota - It’s a bit of a fart of a response to deem a locale or setting, a character, but just watch The White Lotus seasons 1 or 2 and come back and talk to me. If ever there was a film that made you feel the cold, icy endless cycle of Winter in the Midwest as its own side character (apart from Only the Lonely (1991) and While You Were Sleeping (1995)) it’s this film, which was shot entirely in Minneapolis.

  

• In case you’re wondering why Minneapolis, the legend goes that director Tony Bill, fell in love with Jim’s Coffee Shop and Bakery on a trip to the city and made a decision to move the film from New Jersey to Minneapolis. A local actor and restaurant owner (Joe Minjares) even acted in the film, as the owner of the coffee shop/diner where much of the film takes place. The last-minute shift from NJ makes a ton of sense when you consider that both of the two female leads, Perez and Tomei, are New Yorkers with clear NY accents. Other Minneapolis landmarks included in the film are Riverplace, Prince's one-time club Glam Slam, and the old Met Stadium.

• Christian Slater as Adam. Unlike Tomei, Christian Slater was a seasoned actor when this film came out. He had Heathers, Pump Up the Volume, and FernGully: The Last Rainforest behind him. Spot the joke in there, or not. I can never tell how protective the FernGully-verse fans are. In today’s GenZ terminology, Adam would be deemed “emo” and presents some troubling stalker-like behaviors that are problematic, but his sweetness and absolute love for Caroline wins me over, eventually.

  

  

  Phoenix and Slater - Tale of Two Films from 1993 - The Thing Called Love and Untamed Heart

  Side Note: Samantha Mathis, one of my favorite 90s actresses was the lead voice in the animated FernGully opposite Slater. Slater as Adam in Untamed Heart bears a striking resemblance to a young, brooding River Phoenix. Could be the 90s hairstyle.

  Anyways, Phoenix, who was not only Mathis’ boyfriend at the time of his death but also starred in a very memorable, small country romance film with Mathis and other stars, notably a young Sandra Bullock and Dermot Mulroney in The Thing Called Love (directed by Peter Bogdanovich). She also sings a ditty at the end of the film, which has stuck with me over the years so I’m sharing it with you here.

Subplots (That Didn’t)

• The Stalker Stuff - You be the judge: Sweet or Stalker?

  • Adam follows Caroline home every day from work to make sure she gets home safely. Caveat: She walks home from work in the middle of the night alone which even her cousin reminds her is unsafe.

    • Coincidentally this habit of following her allows him to intervene on her behalf to stop the sexual assault from the two douches from escalating when they too, follow her from work. Adam proceeds to beat them up.

  • Adam comes into Caroline’s room at night to watch her sleep, without her knowledge or consent, clearly

    • Adam comes in through the basement to get to Caroline’s room at night

  • Adam gifts Caroline his stash of records that the nuns used to play for him in the orphanage when they fed him nice lies about his heart, which leads to the next one

• Caroline’s Living Situation Made Zero Sense. She’s mid-20s and living at her childhood home still - less weird today than it was probably in the ‘90s. But more to the point, the family acted like props and no one seemed to support her at all. She would pass by her mom and no words transpired. There were never any conversations about her work or failed beauty exam, that I can recall. The family was a backdrop, and much less vibrant than Minneapolis, at that.

• The Baboon Heart was superfluous. I think this film could still have been called Untamed Heart without the silly baboon heart gimmick. Keep Adam’s personality as is. His fiery loyalty and ability to love hard are assets to this film. However, his belief in the nun’s story just played into his weird Peter Pan-like syndrome which infantilized him more and made Caroline respond, in turn, by being more maternal. Meh.

• The Don’t Let The Love of Your Life Fall Asleep in the Car-of-it-all. He may never wake up. And then you’re left with ten minutes of filler at the end of the film which no one wants to watch because we’re all heartbroken.

Side Note Trivia: Actor Vincent Kartheiser, known for his turn as the irascible Pete Campbell from Mad Men and a Minneapolis native, has a credit in this film.

🏆 The More You Know: Untamed Heart earned an “Honorable Mention” in the Zany Rom-Drams/Rom-Coms category by

Michael Maupin

in our latest post on “Top WEIRD Romance Films”

Let’s Discuss

• If you watched Untamed Heart in the 90s and have rewatched it since, how is it working for you? Does it hold up?

• When you think of “Christian Slater” what are the top 3 films that come to mind?

• When you think of “Marisa Tomei” what are the top 3 films that come to mind?

• Are you planning to watch or rewatch this film?

• Did we need the baboon heart as Adam’s origin story to make this film more compelling?

• Do any other subplots not work?

To read more Characters (That Work), Subplots (That Don’t) posts, GO HERE