"Head in the Clouds"

Duigan's political concerns have usually been at the center of his movies, even as light a movie as the charming teen romance "Flirting." Here, as in "Flirting," the politics don't violate the story or feel clumsily appended to it. The trouble is that Duigan believes he's making a serious political drama when the thing that makes the picture watchable is the luxe soapiness of it all. It's fun, but it isn't believable for a minute, especially next to the recent examples of "Charlotte Gray" and "Enigma," wartime melodramas that are both enjoyable in an old-movie sense and credible as grown-up drama.

What is credible here is the chemistry between real-life lovers Theron and Townsend. It's a pleasure to watch two people who so obviously adore each other. And Townsend, who gets to show emotion here -- something not required of him in either "Queen of the Damned" (where nobody was looking at anything besides Aaliyah, anyway -- and who could blame them?) or "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman" -- finally seems like a human being. But the role is a conceit that hasn't been fleshed out, and that's even truer of Theron's Gilda.

It's no news that Theron is luscious to look at. And anyone still debating her ability as an actress after "Monster" (like the bitchy naysayers who took the predictable line of claiming she was praised only because she was a beautiful woman who chose to make herself ugly) just seems too blinkered to see what was in front of them. From moment to moment, what she does in "Head in the Clouds" is convincing. (She's one of the few actresses around who can play soft without going to mush.) It's the role that's a crock -- part bohemian free spirit, part society wastrel, and part Humphrey Bogart, a reflection of the whole dress-up tone of the picture. God knows Theron has the star power to be at the center of a romantic wartime melodrama. But the actress has moved beyond the charming-model stage of her career.

You can't blame a director for wanting to indulge in the glamour of the '30s and the romance of fighting the fascists. But "Head in the Clouds" makes you wish that Duigan had either worked to make the film believable as serious drama or gone unabashedly for tear-jerking. The picture's ending is too much of a bummer to work as a weeper (tear-jerkers make you feel good about being turned into a puddle of snot), and the movie as a whole is way too mushy for the tragic dimension Duigan strains for. But, silly as most of it is, it's not shameful. Duigan should keep trying to meld his conflicting impulses -- a political filmmaker adept at romantic melodrama (especially one who doesn't appear doctrinaire) might turn out some lively work.

"Head in the Clouds" contains one notion that's almost heretical on the left right now: the belief that war can sometimes make a difference. These days, even those of us against the war in Iraq may blanch at the sight of antiwar protesters carrying signs saying "War is never the answer," and so on. Sometimes it is, and it's an ugly truth in danger of being lost on the left right now. Good for Duigan for not losing sight of it.

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