Heaven

TIFF [2002]

Capsule Review Only Our full coverage and more indepth reviews will be published after the Festival has ended Receive email when this page changes

Just thought I'd throw in my usual supplemental reviews of stuff Robert doesn't get to.

My first film of the fest was "Heaven," the new film from director Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run," "The Princess and the Warrior") from a script by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski and his writing partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Starring Giovanni Ribisi and Cate Blanchett, it tells the story of a schoolteacher (Blanchett) living in Italy who, in an act of desperation, attempts to murder a high-powered CEO by placing a bomb in his office. However, things go horribly awry and she causes the deaths of four innocent people. Captured by the Italian police (i carabinieri) she's placed into interrogation with Filippo (Ribisi) as her translator. As he falls for her their relationship leads to complications for family and friends as they hit the road on a romantic odyssey.

While I thought the first half of this film played as a great, taut political thriller, I found its second half became bogged down in a rather turgid romance with little chemistry between the two leads. But the biggest disappointment for me was that I didn't find that the story followed through on the moral line it takes in its first half. I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated by the couple's self-centredness and in the end felt a little cheated. That said, I think Ribisi has never been better (at least in the first half of the film) and Blanchett projects her usual ethereal vulnerability. I just found that the two together just didn't convince me.

It's a case where the real climax of the film comes about halfway through; the rest is just anticlimactic and more than a little dull.

- Lidia F