Talk about a movie with real global feel – Heaven was written by two Poles (Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz), directed by a German (Tom Tykwer), stars both an Aussie (Cate Blanchett) and an American (Giovani Ribisi), and is set in Italy.  As if that weren't exciting enough, Kieslowski (the Trois Couleurs trilogy) cooked up the script right before he died, leaving Tykwer (The Princess and the Warrior) in a similar – albeit far less publicized/scrutinized – situation to Steven Spielberg's attempt to bring Stanley Kubrick's A.I. to the big screen.

So, you may be asking, does all of that wacky international talent make for a good film?  The answer is yes, though not a resounding one.  Heaven's first half is very strong, but things begin to unravel as it approaches its finale.  In one of the film's first scenes, we see British schoolteacher Philippa (Cate Blanchett, The Lord of the Rings) packing what appears to be some type of explosive device and briskly making her way toward a skyscraper in downtown Turin.  Philippa's goal is to kill the chairman of a large electronics company (Stefano Santospago) who she believes is also a drug kingpin indirectly responsible for the deaths of her husband and one of her students.

When the bomb is unwittingly moved after Philippa plants it, four innocent people lose their lives, while her target escapes without a scratch.  Assuming her plan was successful (she hears the explosion while walking away from the building), Philippa almost seems proud when she's rounded up by the Carabinieri.  Her euphoria is quickly shattered when investigators reveal the extent of her bomb's damage in a wild and heartbreaking interrogation scene.  The cops assume Philippa is a terrorist and demand to know who she's working for and what her target was.  They refuse to believe her story about drug kingpins, even though Philippa swears she made numerous calls and wrote letters to the Carabinieri, who ignored her pleas to investigate the drug situation.

When Philippa insists on testifying in English, rookie officer Filippo (Giovanni Ribisi, The Gift) is brought in to translate.  He's the only one who believes her story, and he soon finds himself falling in love with Philippa.  He helps her escape, which leads to Heaven's less-successful second half, highlighted by the two leads wearing the same clothes and getting the same haircut (in addition to nearly having the same name).  Part of the problem is that the characters don't have enough depth, which makes their unlikely romance seem even more improbable.  Aside from the interrogation, there is very little dialogue in Heaven, which also works to undermine the relationship between Philippa and Filippo.  Fortunately, Blanchett can do more acting with her face than most actresses can do with words and gestures.

If someone had said there were parallels between Kieslowski and Tykwer before I saw Heaven, I might have scoffed at the suggestion, but both filmmakers love getting down to stories about fate and love.  In fact, Heaven often feels like more of a Kieslowski film than a Tykwer film.  If anything, Tykwer is a master at creating tension through repetitive and droning music (a lot of which he composes himself), as well as startling compositions (cinematographer Frank Griebe returns as Tykwer's collaborator).  Kieslowski intended Heaven to be the first of a trilogy (he loved the idea of series of different lengths) loosely based on Dante's Divine Comedy.  The second installment is Danis Tanovic's L'Enfer.

1:33 -

for a scene of sexuality