Themes: Unlikely Criminals, Lovers on the Lam, Star-Crossed Lovers
Main Cast: Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Remo Girone, Stefania Rocca, Matthis Sbargia
Release Year: 2002
Country: DE/US
Run Time: 96 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
German filmmaker Tom Tykwer made his English-language debut with this feature, which was adapted from a screenplay co-authored by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski. Philippa (Cate Blanchett) is a British schoolteacher living in Italy, whose husband fell victim to a drug overdose, as have several of her students. Marco Vendice (Stefano Santospago) is a powerful local drug dealer who sold the dope which killed Philippa's husband, as well as a number of neighborhood teens. Disgusted with the inability of the police to bring Vendice to justice, Philippa takes the law into her own hands, planting a bomb which is intended to kill the dealer. However, Philippa's plan goes awry, and instead the bomb kills four innocent bystanders. Philippa is arrested and brought before the police for questioning, not knowing that the interrogating officer in charge of the case, Pini (Mattia Sbragia), is one of Vendice's secret business associates. More comfortable with English than Italian, Philippa requests a translator, and multilingual officer Filippo (Giovanni Ribisi) is brought in to serve as interpreter. Filippo finds himself falling in love with Philippa, and with his help she's able to escape and go into hiding; however, despite her deep regrets about the loss of four lives in the bombing, she is still bound and determined to see Vendice dead. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Alberto di Stasio - Public Prosecutor; Stefano Santospago - Marco Vendice; Alessandro Sperduti - Ariel; Giovanni Vettorazzo - Inspector; Gianfranco Barra - Lieutenant; Vincent Riotta - Caretaker
Credit
Roberta Casale - Art Director, Christoph Steeger - Art Director, Marc Baschet - Associate Producer, Cedomir Kolar - Associate Producer, Shaila Rubin - Casting, Monika Jacobs - Costume Designer, Sebastian Fahr - First Assistant Director, Tom Tykwer - Director, Mathilde Bonnefoy - Editor, William Horberg - Executive Producer, Anthony Minghella - Executive Producer, Sydney Pollack - Executive Producer, Manuela Stehr - Executive Producer, Harvey Weinstein - Executive Producer, Agnes Mentre - Executive Producer, Teresa Moneo - Executive Producer, Arvo Pärt - Composer (Music Score), Uli Hanisch - Production Designer, Frank Griebe - Cinematographer, Frederique Dumas - Producer, Stefan Arndt - Producer, Maria Koepf - Producer, Wolfgang Schukrafft - Sound/Sound Designer, Matthias Lempert - Sound/Sound Designer, Krzysztof Kieslowski - Screenwriter, Krzysztof Piesiewicz - Screenwriter, BUF - Digital Effects
The film is set in Turin, Italy. It opens with a prologue sequence showing the young ItalianCarabinieri clerk Filippo (Ribisi) learning to fly a helicopter using a flight simulator. When he accidentally crashes the virtual helicopter by ascending too dramatically, his instructor tells him that "In a real helicopter, you can't just keep going up and up," prompting Filippo to ask, "How high can you go?" The film then cuts to Phillipa (Blanchett), who is preparing to plant a bomb in the downtown office of a high-ranking businessman. Although everything goes according to her plan, the trash can in which she places the bomb is emptied by a janitor immediately after she leaves and later explodes in an elevator, killing four people.
Philippa is tracked down by the Carabinieri, arrested, and brought to the station where Filippo works. When she is questioned, she reveals that she is an English teacher at a local school where several students have recently died of drug-related causes. Discovering that they had all been supplied by the same local cartel, she had contacted the Carabinieri with the names of the drug ring leaders, begging them to intervene, but was repeatedly ignored. At her wits' end, she decided to kill the leader of the cartel, the businessman whose office she targeted. In the process of her interrogation, Filippo (who is translating her confession for his superiors) falls in love with Philippa and helps her escape from Carabinieri custody. After she kills the drug lord who was her original target, the pair become fugitives from the law and flee to the countryside, where they eventually find refuge with one of Philippa's friends. When the authorities raid the house where they are hiding, they steal a Carabinieri helicopter parked on the front lawn and escape by air. The officers on the ground fire repeatedly at them to no avail as the craft climbs higher and higher and finally disappears.
