Himlens hjärta

"If you don't know someone after 20 years, how will you ever…" This is the big question that the movie Heaven's Heart asks the audience to face – if you can't really understand your spouse after 20 years of marriage, how can you ever truly understand anyone at all?

The film Heaven's Heart begins with the audience seeing the main couple of the film, Susanna and Lars, getting a divorce and they have no idea why. The film then flashes back to 6 months earlier to a dinner party between Susanna & Lars and their best friends Ann & Ulf. At this dinner party the topic of infidelity is brought up because a colleague of Lars has left his wife and kids for a much younger woman. Susanna and Ulf both defend the man – saying that if he has really fallen in love then it is much better that he should leave his wife and kids then staying and being miserable. Lars and Ann both argue strongly against infidelity, saying that they would never want to risk everything they have and they wouldn't ever consider it. This division of opinion between Lars & Ann and their spouses brings the two together in their realization that they both greatly fear that their spouse will find someone else and leave them. The connection that Lars & Ann make eventually leads them to beginning an affair. In the end, although Lars & Ann have previously claimed to be in love, Ann ends up renewing her vows with her husband Ulf, and although they are divorced it appears that Lars & Susanna will also be reuniting despite everything they have been through.

It is disappointing that a movie with a very interesting premise and a group of seemingly strong and complex characters would turn out to be so mundane. At the end of the day everything turned out the same. While both Ann & Ulf and Susanna & Lars have suffered great trials in their relationships during the year that the movie spans they both end up back with their spouses exactly where they began. I thought that I was going to be able to be proud of at least a couple of the characters in the film, but in the end I turned out to be hugely disappointed by everyone except for Elin, Lars & Susanna's daughter who is never actually shown on screen.

Ulf is a player from the start, always discussing with Lars if he should pursue an affair with another woman. While he has never been unfaithful to Ann in action it seems that his heart has wondered off more than a couple times.

Ann is a tragically insecure woman who has lied to her husband from the start out of her fear that he wouldn't marry her/would leave her. I was incredibly frustrated by her and her half-hearted justification to her best friend over how she could essentially steal her husband.

Lars was an incredibly weak character, who turned out to be quite the manipulator in the end. While he seemed very sweet and innocent at the beginning of the affair, he basically turns into a con-artist when he comes crawling back to Susanna after his relationship with Ann ends.

Susanna was a character that I really wanted to like but in the end I was so disappointed with her – I almost would have enjoyed the movie if she had been able to stay strong and tell her ex-husband to shove it when he tried to get back with her, but instead of moving on and realizing she deserved much better than Lars, she held onto his hand and looked into his eyes – signaling that she too would like things to go back to the way that they had been before.

The main thing that actually kept me interested in the film was the impressive use and color in both the wardrobe and set choices. I loved the way in which the director and set designer were so specific in the colors that they choose for absolutely everything in the film, it was a great way to enhance the film and keep the audience engaged. Even without hearing the words spoken by the characters the evolution of their clothing and the furniture around them told a very clear story. For example at the beginning of the film both Ann & Lars are wearing a similar periwinkle blue when they bond over their fear of spousal infidelity and they begin an affair. After the affair is begun the audience only sees Ann in bright, bold colors – while Susanna is always seen in black. The stark contrast between the two women's clothing is a very telling sign of the state of their relationships. Overall the use of color in the film is the most engaging aspect.

While this movie, in the end, has an extremely mundane plot, it is not necessarily a bad movie; it's just not a very good movie. The use of color as a story telling element and the compelling sets that are designed around tables and conversation make for a very interesting visual experience and overall makes this movie one worth viewing simply to see how simple choices like clothing & furniture color can make such a huge impact on a film.

It was a long time ago you saw that many staring eyes as in this Swedish movie. You thought this kind of acting ended with "Lord of the Rings".

But this is quite another film. Two couples in their middle-ages are best friends. Until something happens. It gets more and more complicated, the lies are more or less clever, until the bubble bursts.

Catastrophe is always around the corner here and the viewer feels as much tension as the characters. It's rather creepy, but acted in such an unrealistic way, that you sometimes laugh there you shouldn't. An ambitious try however. A relation story which is very far from all the tiresome comedies you watch about the subject.

"Heaven's Heart's" introductory discussion of adultery between the two couples, makes male and female distinctions. Lars and Ulf have been faithful to their wives over two decades--despite pointed abstentions, while Suzanne and Anne, while holding firm themselves, are surprisingly tolerant of adultery in others. Since all four characters, from the start, seem convincingly adult, and self-determined, the plot development, which points to a reversal on sex positions, seems suspect. Suzanne, especially, pushes the sex liberal line: "Why do people trash adulterers--at least they do something." And while Lars and Ulf need not change to suit the story's twists, Suzanne and Anne are not spared its high drama contortions. At times, it seems that the script undermines their female power, their values, and in the case of Suzanne, her capacity to rise up as a force to be taken seriously.

It all begins in a bed scene, when Suzanne, her tightly reined in hair let loose, begins telling Lars about a recent dream. Her voice is hers, but soon carries an untrue, and unfaithful note. The dream, involving a younger ex-lover, is pure fiction (no one dreams like this) as if closely constructed to invoke lurid female desire, and raging male jealousy. Lars, distressed somewhat, passively weathers his wife's confessional taunt, but it's hardly lost on him. For soon after, Anne, who shares Suzanne's stock script, and seems dialed in to her provocative dream, jumps from 20-year-wife in good standing, to an audacious, self-promoting seductress who's suddenly willing to put two marriages in jeopardy. Cornering Lars, her closest friend, she offers him release from a presumed smoldering resentment and sexual aggression induced by his wife's arousing dream. That this offer is not his idea, or his doing, is female, and freely given, and is all the more satisfying because a night of love-making would be real while Suzanne's passionate fling a mere fantasy, Lars reluctantly accepts, seeming to realize, at the last moment, that the depth of deception would only increase the thrill and satisfaction.

And thus ensues the inevitable catfight between Anne and the aggrieved Suzanne; and the showdown between the two protagonists, Suzanne and Lars. Verbal aggression, insolence, stark accusations, guilt-tripping, and emotional jabs, most leveled by Suzanne, characterize both confrontations. In the former, there's lots of female rage on display, but chiefly directed against each other with Susanne dishing out the most annihilating blows: "backstabbing bit__;" "you little bit__, get out of my kitchen;" or how about "you're effing my husband--get out effing a-hole." Neither refuses this game, not only because they are cast as marriage busters, but because it's the only one each is likely to win.

As to Lars, he has no answers for his uncannily perceptive wife, none for her grilling, none for her righteousness. Susanne: "I know my own worth in spite of you." She insists he's truly pathetic. "I'm married to a considerate cheating husband." "Either break up with her right now or move out." Later, he says "it seems pointless to ask your forgiveness," and soon he's out the door--for good. Six months later they briefly meet socially. Suzanne tells him that his opinion no longer mattes, that their marriage was "prison, suffering, claustrophobia, horrible things like that." She tells him she's found a new superior and younger lover who gives her everything he never did, including wild orgasms. Lars tells her she's a fast mover, but is her tale made of the same stuff as her maddening sex dream? In any case, Lars doesn't shrink this time, and seems to have grown wiser, despite the breakups waste. Susanne responds: "I'm glad you're wiser--it doesn't concern me." Lars breaks out into unequivocal laughter, perhaps finally free of any sense of owning Susanne.

Who is Susanne? Is she a 'new woman' who knows her own boundaries? Or is she a plot mover? Someone who can over-emote, intoxicate, and move the needle on behalf of sexual appetite? Is the plot formula that the wives get to adopt male sexuality while the husbands hold to quiet monogamy? (Lars never seems to be the man Susanne attacks) It's a bit paradoxical in terms of female clout or female exploitation, but I think, a better case can be made for the latter--or a loaded plot, which makes of Suzanne more the conformist than the rebel.

Danish director has directed a marriage drama cast with four excellent Swedish actors. From beginning to end it is beautifully filmed, strongly acted and well written. The story involves two middle-aged married couples who live in lush houses, have good jobs and are set in their ways, perhaps too much so for some or all of them. The dinner conversation when the two couples spend an evening together is the elegant starter of the infidelity drama that follows. This is tough and sometimes excruciating drama, though it does have pieces of playful dialogue throughout; there is also a dose of sweetener added at the end, but interpret it as you wish.

The settings are restricted to a few rooms of their two houses and go along with a style of photography and direction that insists on intimacy and requires precision on the part of the performers. The chamber drama style has been compared to certain moments of Bergman's career, usually favourably. There are also some surprising moments where the director draws attention to himself, for instance by allowing the actors to look straight into the camera; I think this helps keep the film engaging for the interested viewer.

A sidenote on the film title. It's possible that this double-metaphor romantic cliché is meant as some sort of irony on the part of the director, but it refers to nothing in the movie and almost kept me from wanting to see the it. It's already hard enough for films like these to survive in theatres without sticking nonsense titles on them.