The Heart Exposed

The Heart Exposed (French: Le Cœur découvert) is a Canadian drama film, directed by Jean-Yves Laforce and released in 1987. Written by Michel Tremblay as an adaptation of his own novel The Heart Laid Bare (Le Cœur découvert), the film centres on the relationship between Jean-Marc (Gilles Renaud) and Mathieu (Michel Poirier), two gay men who meet and fall in love despite a ten-year age difference and the complication that Mathieu is the father of a five-year-old son.

The film's cast also includes Olivier Chasse, Louisette Dussault, Amulette Garneau, Louise Rinfret, Pierre Houle and Robert Lalonde.

The film premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival in 1987, but was distributed primarily as a television film broadcast by Télévision de Radio-Canada in November. It was later screened at the Frameline Film Festival in 1989, where it won the Audience Award.

Thomas Waugh, writing for Cinema Canada, stated that "It is a fine pleasure to see this warmhearted little gem, not only because of positive representation of gays in this year when everyone's gushing about Night Zoo, a violent misogynist derivative film that exults in queer-baiting and queer-smashing, but because one of our finest writers has made another all-too-rare visit to the screen."