Description

Head in the Clouds is a 2004 Canadian–British war drama film written and directed by John Duigan.

The original screenplay focuses on the choices young lovers must make as they find themselves surrounded

by increasing political unrest in late-1930s Europe.

The film was a critical and box office failure.

In Paris in the year 1924, a young 14-year-old Gilda Bessé, the daughter of a French aristocrat and an emotionally unstable American mother, is told by a fortune teller that the life line on her palm does not extend past the age of 34. Years later, on a rainy night in 1933, Gilda stumbles into the room of Guy Malyon, an Irishman who is a first-year scholarship student at Cambridge University.

She has had a lover’s quarrel with one of the dons, and rather than turn her out into the storm, Guy gallantly allows her to spend the night. Later, they become lovers, but the two are separated when Gilda’s mother dies and she opts to leave England. A few years later, Guy sees her as an extra in a Hollywood film, and shortly after he coincidentally receives a letter from her inviting him to visit her in Paris, where she is working as a photographer.

Guy discovers that Gilda is living with the Spanish-born nursing student/model Mia and has a lover, whom she quickly discards when Guy moves in. The trio are enjoying their unusual living arrangement, but world events are beginning to affect their existence. It is the height of the Spanish Civil War, and the idealistic Guy, a long-time supporter of the army of the Second Spanish Republic, is determined to do what he can to help them as Francisco Franco‘s nationalists gain strength. Mia, too, is anxious to come to the aid of her native land. Gilda, however, has no interest in politics or anything else that might disrupt her life of luxury, and pleads with the two to ignore the conflict, but they feel compelled to act and depart for Spain.

By January 1938, Guy becomes a soldier, while Mia becomes a nurse and tends to the wounded. They cross paths one night and, before sleeping with Guy, Mia confesses she was Gilda’s lover. In the morning, her ambulance is destroyed by a land mine, resulting in Mia’s death as well as the ambulance driver’s. A few months later in July 1938, Guy returns to Paris, where he is ignored by Gilda, who feels his abandonment of her was a form of betrayal.

Six years later, Guy is working as a spy with the underground in occupied Paris under the auspices of British intelligence. He learns that Gilda has taken Nazi Major Franz Bietrich as a lover and visits her in their old apartment, where the two make love. The following morning, she tells him their affair is over and the two can never see each other again. D-Day is approaching, and Guy throws himself into his work. One day he arrives at a café to meet a contact, but instead is approached by Gilda, who has overheard her German lover plotting a trap and has come to help him escape in cleric’s clothing she has concealed in the restaurant’s washroom. That night, he and his associates destroy a rail station, but only Guy manages to elude the German soldiers.

Guy returns to London, where he discovers Gilda joined the Resistance a few years earlier. With the occupation of Paris having come to an end, he realizes that the locals, who had long regarded Gilda as a Nazi sympathizer and traitor, will seek revenge. As he returns to Paris to find her, Guy is unaware that Bietrich has been killed in Gilda’s apartment and that she has been taken captive by a mob intent on avenging the deaths of their loved ones. She is finally killed by a local Resistance fighter to avenge the death of his sister, whom Bietrich killed. In Gilda’s ransacked apartment, Guy reads the last letter written by her to him.

• Charlize Theron as Gilda Bessé
  • Jolyane Langlois as 14 Year old Gilda
• Penélope Cruz as Mia
• Stuart Townsend as Guy Malyon
• Thomas Kretschmann as Sturmbannführer (Major) Franz Bietrich
• Steven Berkoff as Charles Bessé
• David La Haye as Lucien
• Karine Vanasse as Lisette
• Gabriel Hogan as Julian Elsworth
• John Jorgensen as Django Reinhardt
• Christine Solomon as Parisian Woman #2

The film was shot in London, Cambridge, Montreal, and Paris.

The soundtrack included « Parlez-moi d’amour » by Jean Lenoir, « Blue Drag » by Josef Myrow, « Minor Swing » by Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, « Big Jim Blues » by Harry Lawson and Mary Lou Williams, « La rumba d’amour » by Simon Rodriguez, « Vous qui passez sans me voir » by Charles Trenet and Jean Sablon, « My Girl’s Pussy » by Harry Roy and performed by John Duigan and « La litanie à la vierge » by Francis Poulenc.