Heaven

Last night I watched "Heaven" on television. I was about to skip it because I hadn't heard nothing about it. Luckily, I stayed tuned. And I say luckily because it's one of the best films that I've seen lately.

"Heaven" is a marvelous conjunction of neo-noir drama with a surprising touch of magic realism. The story-line is so original that caught me in a while. The film construction is puzzling, but never confusing, and helps the film to be even more thrilling and fascinating than it's promising premise allowed us to expect. The editing job here is really remarkable; I'd dare to say it is, along with "Pulp Fiction" and "Memento", one of the most coherent and creative works seen in the nineties American filming.

Martin Donovan is excellent, as well as the rest of the cast, but if you look for one unforgettable character, the travesty Heaven, sweet, strong in her weakness and with the surprising ability to anticipate the fate of those who surround her, will immediately catch your eye.

After watching "The ugly" and this extraordinary piece of film art, I'm really looking forward to see Scott Reynold's new project.

Okay, I am a Martin Donovan fan first of all, and Heaven was an incredible vehicle for Martin to show us once again his great acting skills. In fact, the entire cast did a great job. Yes, the sequence of the film was a bit confusing, but then became very surprising and enjoyable -never predictable. Martin is a master of subtlety and watching him perform is pure delight. Next to the Book of Life, this is my favorite Donovan film.

Robert Marling is a struggling architect who is a gambling addict, a drunk and separated from his wife. His wife is filing for divorce, seeking sole custody of their son and chasing Robert for more money than he has. The reason she is after the money is because she is having an affair with Dr Melrose, who is treating a stripper called Heaven. Heaven has a gift of premonition and she has seen Robert winning a lot of money from her boss, Stanner, in a card game. However, in her sessions with Melrose, Heaven tells him these visions - information he feeds to Jennifer's lover. Heaven also shares this information with Robert and, as a result, they get closer - however Heaven is also haunted with dark, violent visions of the future that she cannot fully understand.

I confused this film with another one of the same title when I videoed it last week. Despite this I decided to give it a try anyway and see if it was any good and I'm glad I did - which is not to say that I'm proclaiming this film for everyone. The plot is never less than weird, and this is possibly the only way to describe it. It goes places that I didn't expect and it goes there in moments of sudden pace changes or sudden violence. This is made more impacting by the non-linear way that the story is told, other reviewers have compared it to the backwards telling in Memento but it is not to that extreme. However we do quite often see consequences before the film shows us the actions that caused them. For the most part this seems to work really well, even if I would find it difficult to really explain why. What I do know is that the story and the manner of the telling served to pull me along with it effortlessly for the whole running time. The only word of warning would be that the film is quite graphically violent at times and the whole subject matter is unrelentingly dark.

The cast is a very strange mix that really reflects the strange mix of characters that are depicted. Mixing actors from America with those from New Zealand and Australia has a slightly confusing effect (at the start I thought it was happening in two different time zones) but the majority of them are worth this minor quibble. Donovan is nearly always watchable and he is here again, giving a great performance in a difficult role. Even more surprising is Danny Edwards, who plays Heaven without cliché and manages to make such an unlikely person into a character that I cared about. Schiff is a surprise and is very different from the West Wing character who I always see him as now; the film also has a pre-lord of the rings role for Karl Urban - he has not much character but he has a good presence. Going and Malahide are OK but really the film belongs to Donovan and Edwards (and to a lesser extent, Schiff) and they carry it well.

Of course by `belongs to them' I mean in the acting stakes as the film is very much the property of writer/director Reynolds. He gives the whole film a great feel and has written a script that could easily have been silly and exaggerated and it is to his credit that in his hands it only manages to be involving and really enjoyable.

Overall this is a great film that pleased me even more by the fact that I found it by chance. I'm sure many viewers will be put off by the character of Heaven, or the unexplained nature of her gift, or the way the film goes extreme places or even the fact that bits are told out of sequence, however I hope that most viewers will see these aspects as strengths - strengths that were held together by a writer/director who I will be looking out for from now on.

This film, shown at both the Montreal and Toronto film festivals, is

so original that its merits passed over the heads of the busy

reviewers.

Scott Reynolds uses a very clever device to allow the viewer to

suspend disbelief that one of the characters could accurately

foretell the future. Heaven, the seer, is a transvestite stripper in a

regular strip club. The viewer focuses on this improbability and

lets the improbability that someone can foresee the future slip into

the film's reality.

Having created a believable character that can and does foretell

the future, Reynolds is then faced with another problem. How to

keep the viewer from knowing the future. He accomplishes this

with a series of carefully staged flashbacks (and flash forwards)

that, although accurate, are out of sequence and therefore lead the

viewer to believe in a series of events that is not accurate.

I have never seen a more cleverly thought up, worked out and

executed script.

With his plan in place, Reynolds creates one of the most

improbable plots imaginable, but because we have moved beyond

suspending disbelief and become believers, one that seems very

probable.

Richard Schiff superbly portrays the character of the strip club

owner, Stanner. Stanner has hired Heaven and brought him/her

under his wing because he has turned Heaven's ability to foretell

the future into profits. Stanner, however, is also involved with

Robert Marling, played by Martin Donovan (II). I would continue to

say superbly, but the fact is, the acting in the film is first rate all

around.

Marling is going through a bitter divorce with the stunning Joanna

Going as Jennifer Marling. Jennifer is seeing the sleazy

psychiatrist Dr. Melrose played by Patrick Malahide.

And in the pivotal coincidence, Heaven is also seeing the

unbelievably evil (but nonetheless believable) Dr. Melrose

because Heaven's visions of the future trouble him/her deeply (the

visions, not the sexual ambiguity).

Marling is a down and out gambling addict, an architect who is

designing a new club Stanner has commissioned with the

millions he has earned from following Heaven's visions of the

future. Marling is forever losing money to Stanner in poker games.

Heaven sets the plot in motion by foreseeing Marling saving him

from being viciously murdered by two sadistic thugs. Heaven sets

out to reward Marling by using his/her foretelling abilities to feed

Marling information on how the cards will fall in his poker hands

with Stanner.

Evil Dr. Melrose discovers this in his sessions with Heaven. He

seduces Jennifer. Advising her on her divorce settlement, the bad

doctor tells Jennifer to hold out for the fortune her husband is

about to come into as a result of Heaven's foretelling, intending to

take the fortune for himself.

Stanner has plenty of cash but can't resist playing the angles,

deciding to burn down his club to make way for the new one

designed by Marling. He hires two homicidal maniacs to do the

task for him, the same two sadists Heaven foresees murdering

him, and it is these two who initiate the mass slaughter that

makes the film so violent.

This film is a sleeper. It will be discovered, its clever features

copied and it will become a classic. Scott Reynolds does not have

a large body of work, but any director or writer would be proud to

have this film to their credit.

Scott Reynolds may not exactly be well known; but his excellent 2001 thriller When Strangers Appear really took me by surprise, and while Heaven is not as accomplished as the aforementioned film, it's still a very good thriller that takes in multiple different elements, which are somehow combined into a mostly coherent whole. Like many post-Pulp Fiction crime thrillers, this one features a fragmented plot which is told through various flashbacks. The main character is Robert Marling; a man with a gambling addiction. He is recovering from a nasty split with his wife Jennifer, who also wants custody of their son. Robert is friends with Stanner; the proprietor of a strip club and employer of transvestite dancer Heaven. Heaven has an unusual ability to see into the future and takes a shine to Robert when she recognises him from one of her premonitions. The plot thickens when it emerges that the psychologist treating Robert is having an affair with his wife and also treating Heaven...

Most of the film is kept within the realms of possibly; the only exception to this being the mystical abilities of the title character, which comes off as being a little strange despite being integral to the plot. Initially, I had the film pegged as a rip-off of The Crying Game; but actually it doesn't make a meal of its gender-bending lead character at all. The plot does flow surprisingly well considering that it is put forward in a fragmented manner; the strong screenplay manages to put everything across in such a way that it all makes sense. There's no shortage of memorable characters, with strip club owner Stanner standing out most in that respect. The strip club itself is very well done and the director ensures that it has a fantastically sleazy atmosphere; it's just a shame that it isn't featured more! The ending is suitably strange and ambiguous; therefore suiting the film well. All in all, this is not quite a brilliant thriller; but it's well made and gripping for the duration and therefore I recommend it.