Review of Head in the Clouds

Set in England, France and Spain between the 20s and the end of WWII, it doesn't really evoke any of the places it's set in very convincingly - only rather superficially. It wasn't a bad film – nowhere near as lame as something like Charlotte Gray, for instance. It wasn't an especially good movie, either, though. Nothing about Head in the Clouds is ever dreadful, but it's also all rather skin deep, with none of the characters' plights ever really moving the viewer. When Charlize Theron's poor little rich girl Gilda had to choose between the Gestapo Officer and the nice, idealistic Irish boy fighting for the partisans in the Spanish Civil War, I was willing her to go for the sexy German. Oops – probably not what its makers had in mind. It didn't really matter, though - to me she was just having to choose between a blonde haired guy and a dark haired guy, and not much else. Finally, Penelope Cruz, who'd borrowed her limp from Audrey Tautou's character in Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles, looked like she was waiting for Almodovar to pop by any minute and whisk her off to a far more interesting film set. At least my boyfriend got to see Theron's boobies, though, so he was happy about that.