Mercedes, Here Lies the Heart

Mercedes, Here Lies the Heart is dedicated to the memory of poet, novelist, playwright, and Hollywood screenwriter, Mercedes de Acosta. Mercedes is inspired by De Acosta’s own published memoirs, Here Lies the Heart (1960) in which De Acosta obsessively lists her impressive cache of celebrity acquaintances (including Eleonora Duse, Isadora Duncan, Alice B. Toklas, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo, among others). The film borrows De Acosta’s hyperbolic stylistics to move through archival footage, narrative fantasy sequences, and dramatic “reenactments” in manic combination of varied genre forms. While highlighting De Acosta’s distinctive passions for celebrity and her own sexual, ethnic, and spiritual entanglements, Mercedes poses questions about biographical structure and autobiographical representation, history and fantasy, identity and desire.