Plot
Marie Davenport, a lapsed Catholic, is having an affair with Dr. Daniel Corvin, unbeknownst to her husband, Dr. Alex Davenport, also a doctor. She intends to break the news to Alex while attending a medical conference with him in Mexico. While swimming in a bay at Acapulco, Alex is struck by a passing motorboat. He is rushed to the hospital with a massive head laceration, but dies during emergency surgery.
The following morning, Marie is notified by the hospital that, prior to Alex's scheduled autopsy, his body inexplicably disappeared. Meanwhile, Daniel learns of Alex's death, and breaks the news of his affair with Marie to his girlfriend, Anna, who is infuriated. Marie returns to her home in Los Angeles while authorities attempt to locate Alex's body. Marie receives an anonymous message—which she presumes is from Daniel—asking her to travel to a hotel in Carmel-by-the-Sea that she has stayed at before, where she first met Daniel.
After visiting the local convent, Marie returns to her hotel room, where she is shocked to find Alex, seemingly alive. Alex recounts his memory of that day, and his waking up in the hospital morgue. Exhausted, Alex falls asleep, and appears to be dead, but later returns to life as he wakes. A flummoxed Marie returns to the church and speaks with Monsignor Cassidy, to whom she recounts her apostasy after her mother died when Marie was a teenager. She also tells him of a vision she had the year before while staying in Carmel-by-the-Sea: While walking along the ocean cliffs near the convent, she became fixated on two ponds below, and witnessed the Virgin Mary emerge from the water, instructing her to inform a priest that a sanctuary be rebuilt for the convent.
Daniel arrives in Carmel-by-the-Sea and meets Marie at the hotel. She explains that Alex has met her there and is apparently alive. Marie reluctantly tells Daniel she cannot be with him, as she still feels a profound connection to Alex. Daniel, though defeated, agrees to perform a medical examination of Alex. The two decide to bring Alex to a hospital in San Francisco due to his declined physical state. Father Niles, a colleague of the Mosnignor, follows them, attempting to speak with Marie, but she denies him. When Daniel leaves for a brief work trip, Marie visits Alex in the hospital, but he reacts violently, vomiting blood. Marie is comforted by Father Niles, who trailed her to the hospital. In Father Niles's confidence, she confesses that she and Daniel orchestrated the boating accident, intending to kill Alex; she interprets Alex's return to life as God giving her a second chance.
After Alex is released from the hospital, he and Marie spend the evening together, but he awakens in the middle of the night, thrashing violently, and his head wound begins inexplicably bleeding again. She phones Father Niles for help and returns to the convent in Carmel-by-the-Sea. There, Sister Martha, a young nun, prays on the cliffside where Marie had her vision the year before. A wind bursts across the cliffs, terrifying Marie, and a cross appears embedded in the cliffside. Meanwhile, Alex wakes alone at the hotel, his head wound miraculously healed.
Marie returns to the hotel, where Daniel arrives moments later, pursuing her. In the hotel room, Marie is met by Alex. The two embrace, as a defeated Daniel departs. Meanwhile, Father Niles, sitting on the edge of the cliff, watches the sun set.
Reception
Critical response
Time Out gave the film a mixed review, noting that "Roeg's adaptation of Brian Moore's novel fuses deeply felt emotions and religious ideas into a gripping metaphysical thriller that is both moving and intellectually challenging," but conceded "for all its technical brilliance and narrative assurance, the film's climactic scenes require an act of faith that no film-maker—Christian, agnostic or atheist—has any right to ask". [15] Janet Maslin of The New York Times similarly felt the film's first act was promising, but ultimately deemed Roeg's direction "peculiarly blunt and uncomplicated, except on those occasions when he can edit groups of turbulent images—memories of the accident, a thunderstorm, swaying rosaries, crashing religious icons—into some semblance of even greater turmoil. Most of the time the film looks and sounds drab, thanks particularly to hand-held-camera work and to the bland motel-room interiors in which much of the story unfolds. The ending is especially weak, as the film builds toward a visionary episode that winds up looking absurd." [16] Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle found the film's screenplay and style inconsistent, writing that "Roeg seems to be trying to mix bargain basement theology with his usual mystery-suspense motif and in the end it all falls apart... As always, Roeg’s work is stylish and surefooted—this time out, though it heads nowhere fast." [17]
Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News awarded the film two out of five stars, noting that Roeg "effectively illustrates Marie's muddled emotional state, but his movie version of Brian Moore's novel is less than gripping." [18] Neil Sinyard in Reference Guide to British and Irish Film Directors described it as "disappointing... unusually dour and dry in its treatment of guilt and paranoia". [19] Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film is "ponderous without having much weight; we keep expecting the story to fill out, to achieve a vision that matches Marie’s. But the big storm-tossed finale comes across like cut-rate De Mille. This is a “religious” movie without much religious feeling. Roeg manages to work up a queasy atmosphere of impending dread in the boating scenes and the scenes between Marie and another priest (Will Patton) who keys into her visions." [10] The Austin American-Statesman 's Michael MacCambridge felt Russell's performance was underwhelming, and that, "in the end, the pieces don't fit together. Roeg has always been self-indulgent, but a picture as uneven as this one causes us to wonder how he became a respected director in the first place." [20]
Variety praised the film, "Infidelity has seldom offered as broad a canvas for torment and religious guilt as in Nicolas Roeg's Cold Heaven, a tortured study of love on the rocks that comes off like a jumbled bad dream," adding that "Russell, under husband Roeg’s direction, does terrific work in her scene with a priest (Will Patton), but she and Harmon have a tough and thankless task in playing out this tormenting psychodrama." [21] The Chicago Reader 's Jonathan Rosenbaum gave the film a favorable review, deeming it a "must-see" and writing: "I doubt that I could give an accurate plot summary of Cold Heaven even if I wanted to. That’s the film’s charm: for much of its running time, it unveils itself by other means. People who assume that life is only a story or that emotions in movies are only about events are missing one hell of a lot when it comes to both life and movies." [22]
