Heaven (15)

It's paradise, but only for a while

Did Krzysztof Kieslowski go to heaven? If so, what's the view like? The Polish film-maker died six years ago, aged 54, leaving his long–term writing partner, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, to develop their co-authored Heaven, Hell and Purgatory project with younger directors. The honour of opening the trilogy falls to Tom Tykwer, the German director of Run, Lola, Run, so maybe he has an answer...

It's getting on a decade since Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy established itself as the high water-mark of European art-house cinema. But Kieslowski's films were only occasionally as forbidding and pompous as that estimation. The works that earned him his international reputation – Dekalog, The Double Life of Veronique, Three Colours Blue, White and Red – were often austere and "difficult". But once you got past his reputation, Kieslowski's talent for producing films that bewitched their protagonists morally, emotionally and philosophically was undeniable.

Heaven begins promisingly in the same vein. Philippa (Cate Blanchett), an English teacher living in Turin, tries to kill a big-time drug dealer by blowing him up. For years, Philippa explains, she has been writing in vain to the local carabinieri imploring them to arrest the man she believes is responsible for the deaths of her husband and, indirectly, many of her pupils. (That's a mistake, for a start – can you think of a film in which the carabinieri have ever got their man?)

Philippa's vigilante bombing goes wrong and four innocent people die instead. Distraught, she confesses to the crime, at which point Filippo, a young police officer (Giovanni Ribisi) falls in love with the English woman, springs her from custody and helps her finish off the job she botched. Broadly, then, the film's consideration of heaven rests on the following question: does redemption lie in punishment, or in more bloodletting and the arms of a besotted rookie cop?

More to the point, is Kieslowski's cinematic legacy safe in the hands of young Euro-lions such as Tom Tykwer? This is the 37-year-old German's fifth feature, and he's an intriguing choice. Still, even audiences only familiar with his biggest hit by far, Run, Lola, Run would have noticed that film's hyperactive tinkering with those favourite interests of Kieslowski : chance, fate and personal autonomy (not to mention eye-catching female leads.)

And whatever Lola took to keep her going, Tykwer, to his credit, injects into Heaven. For the first 45 minutes, it tears along – a lean, tense thriller, that deals starkly with Philippa's crime before teeing up her daring escape with Filippo from carabinieri headquarters. Kieslowskian devices, such as the use of tape-recorded voices, are treated efficiently rather than reverentially. The only thing that slows progress is the depiction of the Italian police force – imagine the Keystone Cops as filmed by Bertolucci and you'll get a good idea of their smartly tailored incompetence.

But let's be generous to Tykwer and say that he was probably paying more attention to his two leads. For that, he's rewarded by Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. The latter, particularly, has little to go on. The only significant character detail we learn about Filippo comes in the film's inscrutable prologue; at the joystick of a helicopter-flight simulator, but off-camera, he points the nose toward the heavens and wonders aloud "How high can I fly?". These are the words of a would-be angel, and it's surely no coincidence that Ribisi looks and moves like a malnourished grounded cherub. As for Blanchett, where was she 10 years ago when Kieslowski needed her? She exudes more sense of moral enquiry on a trip to the bathroom here than Irène Jacob managed throughout the entirety of The Double Life of Veronique.

Unfortunately, Tykwer relaxes his grip the minute that the fugitives board a train out of Turin. As they speed along, the camera travels through a tunnel towards the light at the end of it – surely he can do better than that when it comes to spiritual metaphor? In fact, we know he can; to conclude the film's opening sequence, we see a cleaner carrying Philippa's bomb unwittingly into a glass elevator – seconds after the doors close, the explosion forces them open a couple of inches, light streaming through. Equally, when Filippo and Philippa initially seek refuge in an attic eyrie of the carabinieri headquarters, Tykwer exercises a lightly ironic sense of where heaven is or isn't to be found.

Later in the film, though, it seems as if the effort is all too much. Filippo and Philippa wander the Tuscan countryside as aimlessly as they discuss the nature of their relationship. To suggest their strengthening bond, Tykwer has them shave their heads and wear white t-shirts, to go with their rhyming names. The trouble is that Blanchett and Ribisi look less like kindred spirits on a Platonic journey to redemption than Hare Krishna members on the lam. It may even be that we are meant to see something cult-like in Filippo and Philippa's near-wordless complicity. Who knows? The script is quite mute at this point. This is too bad, because without much narrative for Tykwer to drive forward, he struggles to invest a stalling second half with much dramatic momentum – I'm sure Tykwer didn't intend Filippo and Philippa's climactic hill-top love-making scene to resemble a New Age post-card, but that's the effect.

In fact, most of the Italy on display here looks like it's fallen off the side of a pasta-sauce jar: plump policeman, al-fresco weddings in hill-top villages, idyllic Tuscan farm-houses ... But maybe Kieslowski has to share some of the blame for this. His final films were self-consciously diverse productions, usually shuttling between Poland and France in their settings. As the Iron Curtain was drawn back, Kieslowski seemed possessed of an admirably wide European perspective, as long as you didn't expect much authentic detail. Heaven is also quite inclusive in this respect – Philippa is an English woman living in Italy, after all, and the dialogue mixes Italian and English. Yet her background remains frustratingly vague, and I've said enough about the film's take on Italy and Italians. Europeans, it's safe to say, know their continent better than a decade ago, and it grates to see Italy used as nothing more than a decorative backdrop.

As for the remaining parts of the trilogy, who'll be getting Hell? I don't know, but Nicolas Winding Refn, the brash director of Pusher, might pep things up. And how about François Ozon for Purgatory? Tykwer has raised the curtain in some style. It's a pity that he ends up like all those who aim at heaven – he falls.

Jonathan Romney returns next week