Heaven

Based on a posthumous screenplay by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski (Three Colours Trilogy, Dekalog), Heaven is a compelling tale of fate and serendipity, and the most accomplished and inspired work yet from German wunderkind Tom Tywker (Run Lola Run, The Princess And The Warrior)

Basically Badlands relocated to idyllic Tuscany, the film sees a young Turin police translator (Ribisi, proving that there’s more to his range than comic facial tics) falling for a widowed English schoolteacher (a mesmerising Blanchett) who has been arrested after her assasination attempt on a drug-dealer goes horrifically wrong.

Distinctly European in its merging of the achingly romantic and the metaphysical, Heaven really is the kind of sublime vision that doesn’t encourage or deserve minute analysis, that all-too-rare movie where one character can fall in love irreparably with another thanks to one stray strand of her hair, despite the fact that she has just caused the deaths of two little girls.

Director Tywker deftly handles such emotional concerns, but also fashions a film of extraordinary and otherworldly beauty; full of halos and golden shards of light. In short, the filmic equivalent of sitting on soft fluffy clouds in paradise

An eerily beautiful film from an increasingly impressive director, and a truly fitting tribute to the old Pole. Spellbinding.