Synopsis
Gilda Bessé shares her Paris apartment with an Irish schoolteacher, Guy Malyon, and Mia, a refugee from Spain. As the world drifts toward war, Gilda defiantly pursues her hedonistic lifestyle and her burgeoning career as a photographer. But Guy and Mia feel impelled to join the fight against fascism, and the three friends are separated.
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Cast
- Charlize TheronGilda Bessé
- Penélope CruzMia
- Stuart TownsendGuy Malyon
- Thomas KretschmannMajor Thomas Bietrich
- Peter CockettMax
- Gabriel HoganJulian Ellsworth
- Karine VanasseLisette
- David La HayeLucien
- Steven BerkoffCharles Bessé
- John RobinsonDavid Beamish
Recommendations
- 50
The Hollywood Reporter
Unconvincing melodrama. - 50
Variety
A lively, plush but unconvincing potboiler cobbled from familiar pieces of better films (and TV miniseries). - 50
Los Angeles Times
Lacks freshness and vitality. - 40
Newsweek
A paint-by-numbers old-fashioned romantic epic, Head in the Clouds is neither romantic nor epic, but it does succeed at old-fashioned. - 40
New York Magazine (Vulture)
The film is a stodgy snooze, and Theron, who is about as expressive here as a porcelain doll, lacks all believability--she's followed her best performance (in Monster) with her worst. - 40
The A.V. Club
The film feels more at home with sex than war, like a romance novel where the swinging lovers find their passions stirred by bombs exploding in the distance. Their three-way dalliances are so frivolous and silly that once the action turns dark, Duigan and his cast leave audiences unprepared for the emotional fallout. - 40
The New York Times
This pulpy, sex-drenched wartime epic seems frivolous, quaint and foolishly prurient. - 33
Entertainment Weekly
Stuart Townsend, Theron's reallife boyfriend, may have inner fires as an actor that have yet to be revealed, but in Head in the Clouds he's a somber puppy who looks as if Theron could eat him alive. I wish she had.
