Heaven's Tears

I watched this movie because it is the first movie I have seen on the "Love" channel rated "Mature". The "very graphic sex scenes" are actually quite mild for a rating of "Mature"; it probably would get a "R" in the movie theaters, at least for the sex scenes.

The verbal violence is about as strong as you will ever see. I saw this movie on the "Love" channel and I saw sex, hatred and jealousy yet I saw no love. I am not complaining about the sex but the hatred and jealousy was strong and I think very well portrayed (as in acting), to the extent that it can make you sick of the world to allow such atrocities to occur. The movie does seem to show how strong some people react with jealousy to sex.

I do agree that the age of the young woman becoming sexually involved is controversial. If I am doing my arithmetic correctly, the actress, Beata Pozniak, was much older than the character she was playing, but she sure looks young. She is sure very pretty too.

I watched this movie because I like movies about Germans or other types falling for Jews during this time period. I have never seen any of the actors in anything else before, so I can't judge them on previous roles. I thought it was an all right movie, not great, but not bad either.

I liked the way Beata Pozniak played Ingrid, she was quite nasty and vile, but I loved her. She actually had the best role. I loved her voice, and she was very stunning.

Lisha, who played Celandine, wasn't the best. There was really nothing to Celandine, you didn't really feel any emotions for her. I don't feel that I got to know her.

Peter Steiner, played by Stephen Nichols, gave me that same feeling. Peter was very underdeveloped. You just didn't care about these people.

As for the sex, I didn't see that there was anything porn-like about it.

Stephen just looks too old to play this role, though. I mean, really.

The parts that really made me feel something in this film were Beata's scenes, the shots of the real Nazi Soldiers and Hitler, and the scene between Peter and Celandine in the car.

The real shots of the Nazi soldiers made me shudder. Those were just creepy.

The scene in the car was SO romantic, and actually, it was more erotic in my mind, the way they touched hands.

This film is nicely done. The cinematography is lovely, the locations shot in Czech Republic beautiful. A story of forbidden attraction due to age and race during what was very dangerous times as the Nazi protectorate took over the country, a time few can understand or relate to now. But life then was so different then and often romances escalated with a sense of urgency with no guarantees of tomorrow. A small film but well done.

Heaven's Tears is close to the worst film I've ever seen. The plot is so ludicrous and implausible, it's incomprehensible. A soldier in the Nazi army during Hitler's regime, whose father is in the upper ranks of the Third Reich, is driving in the country one afternoon when he clips the bicycle of a teenage girl who appears suddenly before he can stop. The girl is knocked off her bicycle and the officer stops to attend to her. The girl is not seriously hurt. She's also beautiful, and the officer is instantly smitten. The girl also turns out to be Jewish, which, needless to say, is more than a minor inconvenience for the young couple. True love is not to be deterred, however, and the Nazi and the Jewish girl set out to persuade their families to accept their unlikely match, as well as their respective communities that each is wrong about the other. Where is Hank Williams, Jr., when you need him?

It gets worse from there, as well as more imbecilic a plot as the story progresses (not to mention seriously offensive). It defies imagination that someone fancying himself a writer could sell this script to a film studio, and that any producer would consider making it a movie. The film was made in The Netherlands, no doubt because no studio in the US would touch this idiotic piece of trash with a pole of any length, which actually restores a drop of respect to my regard for Hollywood.  Even as an "it's-so-bad-it's-hilarious" diversion, I could not stomach watching it to the end. Ed Wood himself never crafted as nonsensical a stink bomb as this. Zero stars.

I chose to watch this film because I am a Stephen Nichols fan. Unfortunately, I am unhappy with Mr. Nichols' choice to do this movie. The film was slow, badly acted, and included some very graphic sex scenes of Mr. Nichols' character with a very young woman. Watch at your own peril!