''Heaven'' is a 2002 romantic thriller 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), '' Perfume: The Story of a Murderer' ...

, 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 n ...

and Giovanni Ribisi. 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 companie ...

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 attribu ...

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 re ...

. 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

- Philippa * Giovanni Ribisi - 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 Stefania Rocca (born 24 April 1971) is an Italian actress. She is best known for her roles in the films ''Nirvana'' (1997), '' The Talented Mr. Ripley'' (1999) and '' Dracula'' (2002). Rocca also was the lead in Dario Argento's ''The Card Player ...

- 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 Wan ...

, 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 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 average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

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 ''Run Lola Run'' (german: Lola rennt}, lit. "Lola Runs") is a 1998 German experimental thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer. The story follows a woman named Lola ( Franka Potente) who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutschmarks in twenty ...

'' and '' The Princess and the Warrior''. 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

* {{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