Head In The Clouds

Synopsis: It is the 1930s and gorgeous American heiress Gilda Bessé (Charlize Theron) forms a relationship with an Irish schoolteacher, Guy Malyon (Stuart Townsend), and Mia (Pénelope Cruz), a refugee from Spain. As the world drifts toward war, Gilda pursues her hedonistic lifestyle but Guy and Mia join the fight against fascism.

Expatriate Australian director John Duigan has come a long way with this self-penned film starring international A-list actors, Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz. Impressive as that achievement is, does the world need another 30s costume drama? Not if the story and its telling does not in itself justify the exercise. Too often the meticulous, near-fetishistic art, costume and production design which this 'tween wars period regularly attracts overwhelms the drama and this is the case in Duigan's film which reproduces the familiar look of any number of films also set at the same time. So much so that one marvels at the effort that has been taken to authentically reproduce the era (with the exception of the disjunctive set used for the exterior to Gilda's Paris apartment that looks like it came from An American In Paris via Delicatessen), complete with pointedly casual incidentals, across what is a multi-phased narrative that moves from Cambridge to London to Paris to Spain and back again. Such a wealth of detail and so many locations becomes oppressive over the film's two hour run time.

That the film is like an inverted triangle with its bulk resting on its point is Duigan's responsibility as both writer and director evidently failing to give proceedings any narrative focus or dramatic pace. One of the problems is that Stuart Townsend is miscast in the lead, being too bland an individual (and looking disturbingly like a hybrid of James Spader and Nicholas Lyndhurst from the BBC comedy Only Fools And Horses) to counter-balance the personae of either Ms Theron or Ms Cruz (who, annoyingly, is saddled with a gimpy leg in order to slow her down emotionally), let alone attract their amorous attentions.

But Duigan also structures the film poorly. The opening sequence which establishes the character of the two principals, the diffident, serious-minded Guy and his obviously diametric opposite Gilda signals a standard narrative trajectory that one knows will lead to inevitable heartbreak for Guy and self-re-evaluation for Gilda. Even more disappointingly the dynamics of the ménage a trios which develops between them and the damaged Mia is little more than alluded to, one only realizing that it forms the centerpiece of the film in hindsight. And whilst making the fatal mistake of letting go the drama of this relationship Duigan also makes the common error of cobbling onto the film a long-winded exposition of what becomes of his three protagonists after they go their separate ways, incongruously making it look like a re-make of a British post-war WWII film with Charlize Theron playing the Virginia McKenna part.

Head In The Clouds is an unquestionably handsome production that will appeal to nostalgia buffs but that sadly, fails to ignite as either a drama or romance.

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