''Heaven'' is a 2002
romantic thriller
A romantic thriller is a narrative that involves elements of the romance and thriller genres.
A good thriller provides entertainment by making viewers uncomfortable with moments of suspense, the heightened feeling of anxiety and fright. A thril ...
film directed by
Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer (; born 23 May 1965) is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thriller films ''Run Lola Run'' (1998), ''Heaven (2002 film), Heaven'' (2002), ''Perfume: The St ...
, starring
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Elise Blanchett (; born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actor. Regarded as one of the finest performers of her generation, she is known for her versatile work across independent films, blockbusters, and the stage. She has received nu ...
and
Giovanni Ribisi
Antonino Giovanni Ribisi (; born December 17, 1974) is an American actor known for his starring roles in the TV series ''Sneaky Pete'' and the films ''Avatar'' (2009), '' Lost in Translation'' (2003), ''Ted'' (2012) and its sequel ''Ted 2'' (201 ...
. Co-screenwriter
Krzysztof Kieślowski
Krzysztof Kieślowski (; 27 June 1941 – 13 March 1996) was a Polish film director and screenwriter. He is known internationally for ''Dekalog'' (1989), ''The Double Life of Veronique'' (1991), and the ''Three Colours'' trilogy (1993
–1994) ...
intended for it to be the first part of a trilogy (the second being ''
Hell
In religion and folklore, hell is a location in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell ...
'' and the third titled ''
Purgatory
Purgatory (, borrowed into English via Anglo-Norman and Old French) is, according to the belief of some Christian denominations (mostly Catholic), an intermediate state after physical death for expiatory purification. The process of purgatory ...
''), but Kieślowski died before he could complete the project. The film is an
international co-production
A co-production is a joint venture between two or more different production companies for the purpose of film production, television production, video game development, and so on. In the case of an international co-production, production companies ...
among producers based in Germany, France, Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The dialogue is in Italian and English.
Plot
The film is set in
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
, Italy. It opens with a prologue sequence showing the young Italian
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri (, also , ; formally ''Arma dei Carabinieri'', "Arm of Carabineers"; previously ''Corpo dei Carabinieri Reali'', "Royal Carabineers Corps") are the national gendarmerie of Italy who primarily carry out domestic and foreign polic ...
clerk Filippo (Ribisi) learning to fly a
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
using a
flight simulator
A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes. It includes replicating the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they rea ...
. When he accidentally crashes the virtual helicopter by ascending too dramatically, his instructor tells him, "In a real helicopter, you can't just keep going up and up", prompting Filippo to ask, "How high can I fly?"
The film then cuts to Philippa (Blanchett), who is preparing to plant a bomb in the downtown office of a high-ranking businessman. Although everything goes according to her plan, the garbage bin in which she places the bomb is emptied by a cleaner immediately after she leaves and later explodes in an elevator, killing four people.
Philippa is tracked down by the Carabinieri, arrested, and brought to the station where Filippo works. When she is questioned, she reveals that she is an English teacher at a local school where several students have recently died of drug-related causes. Discovering that they had all been supplied by the same local cartel, she had contacted the Carabinieri with the names of the drug ring leaders, begging them to intervene, but was repeatedly ignored.
At her wits' end, she decided to kill the leader of the cartel, the businessman whose office she targeted. In the process of her interrogation, Filippo (who is translating her confession for his superiors) falls in love with Philippa and helps her escape from Carabinieri custody. After she kills the drug lord who was her original target, the pair become fugitives from the law and flee to the countryside, where they eventually find refuge with one of Philippa's friends and finally consummate their relationship.
When the authorities raid the house where they are hiding, the fugitives steal a Carabinieri helicopter parked on the front lawn and escape by air. The officers on the ground fire repeatedly at them, to no avail, as the craft climbs higher and higher and finally disappears.
Cast
*
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Elise Blanchett (; born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actor. Regarded as one of the finest performers of her generation, she is known for her versatile work across independent films, blockbusters, and the stage. She has received nu ...
- Philippa
*
Giovanni Ribisi
Antonino Giovanni Ribisi (; born December 17, 1974) is an American actor known for his starring roles in the TV series ''Sneaky Pete'' and the films ''Avatar'' (2009), '' Lost in Translation'' (2003), ''Ted'' (2012) and its sequel ''Ted 2'' (201 ...
- Filippo
*
Remo Girone
Remo Girone (born 1948 in Asmara, Eritrea) is an Italian film and stage actor. He is best known for the role of Tano Cariddi in the epic TV mini-series ''La piovra'' (''The Octopus''). He appeared as an Italian-American mob boss in '' Live by Ni ...
- The Father
*
Stefania Rocca - Regina
*
Alessandro Sperduti
Alessandro Sperduti (born 8 July 1987) is an Italian actor who has appeared in multiple television and film productions since the age of 11. In 2016, he was noted for his performance as Piero de' Medici in the Rai
RAI – Radiotelevisione ...
- Ariel
Critical reception
''Heaven'' received generally positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has approval rating, based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "The story is the weakest link in this gorgeous and well-acted film."
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
assigned the film a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Though comparisons abound to Kieślowski's earlier films,
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
also saw a similarity to Tykwer's ''
Run Lola Run'' and ''
The Princess and the Warrior
''The Princess and the Warrior'' (german: Der Krieger und die Kaiserin, lit=The Warrior and the Empress) is a 2000 German romantic drama film written and directed by Tom Tykwer. It follows the life of Sissi (Franka Potente), a psychiatric hospit ...
''. Though ''Heaven'' is "more thoughtful, proceeds more deliberately, than the mercurial haste" of Tykwer's films, "it contains the same sort of defiant romanticism, in which a courageous woman tries to alter her fate by sheer willpower."
References
External links
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{{Krzysztof Kieślowski
2002 films
2000s English-language films
English-language French films
English-language German films
English-language Italian films
2002 crime drama films
2002 crime thriller films
2002 romantic drama films
2000s romantic thriller films
2002 thriller drama films
American crime drama films
American crime thriller films
American romantic drama films
American romantic thriller films
American thriller drama films
British crime drama films
British crime thriller films
British romantic drama films
British thriller drama films
Films about terrorism in Europe
Films directed by Tom Tykwer
Films set in Turin
Films shot in Germany
Films shot in Tuscany
French crime drama films
French crime thriller films
French romantic drama films
German crime thriller films
German thriller drama films
German romantic thriller films
Italian romantic drama films
Italian crime thriller films
Italian thriller drama films
2000s Italian-language films
Films with screenplays by Krzysztof Kieślowski
Films with screenplays by Krzysztof Piesiewicz
2002 multilingual films
American multilingual films
British multilingual films
French multilingual films
German multilingual films
Italian multilingual films
2000s American films
2000s British films
2000s French films
2000s German films