Product: Head in the Clouds (2004)
Rating: 2.0
Awfully Shallow Melodrama with Great Costumes
Immediately after award-winning 'Monster,' Charlize Theron started this new project. Had she known that she could get an Oscar for the acting in the former movie, she would not have been in this melodramatic film, nor posed naked (again) in a bath, just as she did 'Reindeer Games' before.Forgive me. But 'Head in the Clouds' sounds like 'Pearl Harbor' without Micheal Bay's big budget actions. The love triangle against the background of war-time Europe would not be a bad idea, if the characters and the story worked effectively. As it is, the results are awfully turgid, way too incredible melodrama only those fans of the actors and the lavish 30s costumes can enjoy.Ms. Theron is Gilda, free-spirited girl living in 1933, who rushed into the room of poor college student Guy played by Stuart Townsend. Guy, struck by her beauty, later comes to know that Gilda can have more than one lovers at the same time.Then, they meet each other in Paris, where Guy is introduced to another tenant Mia (Penelope Cruz). They live peacefully for a while in the same room, but soon the war breaks up in Sapin (from where Mia comes) and idealistic Guy joins in the war, with Mia as nurse....The story is fairly predictable (and the film knows it, when it begins with fortune-telling), but that is not as damaging as the uninteresting realtions between the three. The characters of Gilda, Mia, and Guy are all superficially drawn, and if you remember Ben, Josh, and Kate in 'Pearl Harbor,' you will know what I mean. They are what we call handsome or gorgeous, and nothing else, except, perhaps, its beautifully re-created costumes (by Mario Davignon, DiCaprio's 'Romeo and Juliet').I won't tell anything about the ending, which is too unplesant for some (especially the French), and devoid of suspence or emotion. When you see Thomas Kretschmann as German officer again, you will be reminded of his much deeper, more complex character in 'The Pianist.' No trace of the depth is to be seen in this film.After all, it's all about costumes. The director John Duigan ('Siren') used the name of Gilda, maybe Rita Hayworth in mind. But though we certainly witness the seductive charms of Charlize Theron here, it is only squandered among the impossible story and shallow characters.