Product Details

• Actors: Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, Penélope Cruz, Thomas Kretschmann, Steven Berkoff
• Directors: John Duigan
• Writers: John Duigan
• Producers: Alain Pancrazi, André Rouleau, Bertil Ohlsson, James Simpson, Jason Piette
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English, French, German, Spanish
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• DVD Release Date: January 25, 2005
• Run Time: 132 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0006J27WO
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,009 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
If movies were solely about the cheap pleasure of watching gorgeous people make grand gestures in epic circumstances--because, sure, sometimes movies are--director/screenwriter John Duigan's goopy, obvious, overwrought contemplation of how global unrest really messes with your love life would be Oscar-worthy. Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, and Penelope Cruz are headstrong 1930s playthings who each discover that they need to pull their attractive heads out of their inviting behinds if they're going to play a part in stopping the spread of European fascism. Charlize is socialite Gilda, who ensnares both brooding, Cambridge-educated Irishman Townsend and Spanish rebel Cruz (who is particularly ill-defined) in a love triangle while seemingly caring not a whit for the imminent goosesteps of the Nazis. Charlize wears a lot of fabulous outfits, and she and real-life paramour Townsend do impetuous things like sport fedoras while romping in a milky-white bathtub; Cruz, meanwhile, performs a passionate impromptu striptease. Hey, there are worse ways to be entertained. Unfortunately, you don't really give a damn about any of them, and you can predict what's going to happen to all of them well before it actually does. It's an efficient, glamorous, hokey, ultimately downbeat time-killer for anyone willing to spend two hours trying to decide which of the doe-eyed trio you'd save from destruction first. --Steve Wiecking

Product Description
As war clouds gather over Europe, a free-spirited socialite and her two lovers live a life of pleasure and privilege until the Spanish Civil War tears them apart. Starring Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I really liked this movie, June 7, 2005

By	Cynthia Waldrop "Cinzia Waldrop-Sanniti" (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

And I can't believe how many negative reviews I'm reading here. There have been occasions when I put on a movie that it's just not the right time. Meaning I've watched movies that didn't immediately draw me in, that I couldn't bring myself to care about the characters or the story. At this point I usually turn it off. But then, the right time will come and the same movie is involving. Why do you think this is? Because it depends where we "are" (and maybe who we are with) when we sit to view. If we are bored and banal or just plain too tired, then we probably don't need to watch this kind of slow-moving, story telling drama. You probably need something more in-your-face, grab you by the ballocks, action-packed drama or a comedy. This movie is perfectly cast. Stuart Townsend is just right in his part. Why would you want a more aggressive, dominant personality? Then it would be his story or his and her story and it's focus is really on Gilda. This movie is for the romantic in all of us.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Party's Over, November 25, 2005

By	Vince Perrin "Byline" (Stockton, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Head in the Clouds" is Charlize Theron's during World War II. While her male and female lovers (Stuart Townsend, Penelope Cruz) fret about fascism in Spain and the collapse of The Third Republic, Charlize lives for the pleasures she savors. As Europe is overtaken by war, Theron adapts to whatever will keep her in cafe society, which in occupied Paris means sleeping with Nazis. Her lovers decamp for Spain to fight Franco and Theron moves in with a kindly torturer. Her English lover returns as a resistance fighter and time runs out for our darling dilettante.

Period music, locations, costumes and sets are all lovingly recreated. That can't be said for the script. The actors are beautiful until they start to speak. Cruz is the only one who conveys any depth or conviction. This movie, if you can't tell by now, ends badly for everyone. Crucial information is withheld to provide a surprise ending that fails to deliver. The good intentions of "Head in the Clouds" make its failures more noticeable. You want to like this movie but its surfaces won't let you.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three nationalities, three twists of fate!, November 8, 2005

By	Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Paris, the always shining beacon of the world, is the frame of this interesting and painful portrait around the lives and times of three outlaw human beings: the most liberal of all of them, the authentic center of gravity of manners, tastes and behavior: Charlize Theron plays Gilda, the irreverence made woman, who has given shelter to a nurse - Penelope Cruz - and has allowed her to go ahead with her bliss and dreams. Both of them lives the convulsed and fabulous thirties, where the Charleston and jazz sounds were emerging with particular emphasis. Her brief stage in Cambridge, allows her to meet a very special man, who eventually will become the love of her life.

This unlimited happiness will be interrupted by the war, attending the call of the conscious, curiously. She as a nurse and he, as sensible human being feel that their happy state of life is not in harmony with a bleeding world; in the neighbor country Spain: The Civil War is a very hard reality to ignore it. That fact will break this curious triangle and both of them will become protagonists of this drama.

Charlize is absolutely devastated in this sense, but this emotional crossroad, this existential dilemma will transform her, leaving behind all the selfishness and she will do her best, according her possibilities to contribute the cause against the world of shadows.

A convincing script with certain narrative pauses, but with enough rhythmic pulse to arrive to a crude but satisfactory conclusion. Charlize Theron was marvelous and credible. Her kaleidoscopic beauty allows her to combine several behaviors: as femme fatale, alluring lover and elusively enigmatic character.

Filmed with a visible inspirational European flavor, that reminded me to Claude Sautet.