Heavenly Pairings

Still, the message remains discernible: Heaven has often been construed as a place for zealots and outcasts, the reward awaiting those whose faith sets them apart from the prevailing culture. Along with Philippa and Filippo's metamorphosis into figures from a Bosch painting, their appearance also suggests the uniform dress of modern-day members of a sacred cult. And although there's little in the way of explicitly Christian symbolism, Heaven—in a manner that some will find unbearably pretentious, but which Tykwer executes with skill and sincerity—manages to give his protagonists the kind of happy ending that, for a certain kind of religious imagination, is literally to die for.

Heaven was directed by Tom Tykwer; written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz; and stars Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. Now playing at the Grove, Los Angeles; Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex, Santa Monica.