Director – Nicolas Roeg, Screenplay – Allan Scott, Based on the Novel Cold Heaven (1983) by Brian Moore, Producers – Jonathan D. Krane & Allan Scott, Photography – Francis Kenny, Music – Stanley Myers, Visual Effects Supervisor – David M. Garber, Special Effects Supervisor – Frank Ceglia, Prosthetics – Cannom Creations, Inc., Production Design – Steven Legler. Production Company – M.C.E.G. Productions, Inc..
Cast
Theresa Russell (Marie Davenport), Mark Harmon (Alex Davenport), James Russo (Daniel Corvin), Will Patton (Father Niles), Julie Carmen (Anna Corvin), Richard Bradford (Monsignor Cassidy), Seymour Cassel (Tom Farrelly), Talia Shire (Sister Martha), Castulo Guerra (Dr DeMencos), Daniel Addes (Dr Mendes)
Plot
Maria Davenport travels from Los Angeles to Acapulco with her husband Alex, a renowned surgeon, as he attends a conference. She has been having an affair with Alex’s colleague Daniel Corvin and is trying to find the opportunity to tell Alex that she wants a divorce. While swimming in the ocean, Alex is struck by a speedboat. He is rushed to hospital but dies. The next day, Marie returns to the hospital to make funeral arrangements only to be told that Alex’s body has gone missing. The hospital has no explanation, even though there was no doubt that Alex was dead. Returning home to Los Angeles, Marie receives a message to come to Carmel, California – only to discover that Alex is there, still alive. As she tries to settle back into life with Alex, Marie finds that things with him are far from normal.
Nicolas Roeg (1928-2018) is one of the great arthouse directors of the 1970s. After working as a cinematographer, Roeg first appeared as co-director of the cult hit Performance (1980) and went on to acclaimed works such as Walkabout (1971), Don’t Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Bad Timing (1980), Eureka (1983) and Insignificance (1985). Roeg has made a surprising number of films that fall within genre confines (see below).
Cold Heaven was the third to last theatrical film that Roeg would make, followed by Two Deaths (1995) and Puffball (2007). In between these, Roeg made tv movies like Heart of Darkness (1993), Full Body Massage (1995) and Samson and Delilah (1996), even directed an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-3). At this point, Roeg was in his sixties and these films are indicative of a once great director in his declining years, no longer able to claim the financing he once did and making works that were greeted as average at best. It is worth remembering that just a couple of years before Cold Heaven came out, Roeg showed he was still on form with the likes of Track 29 (1988) and The Witches (1990). Cold Heaven was further hampered by being held up in release for two years after the distributor M.C.E.G. went bankrupt.
Cold Heaven looks lush and beautiful. There is Theresa Russell (Mrs Roeg in the last of seven collaborations she would make with him) at her most radiant and beautiful – it is a mystery as to why Russell never went on to become a major star. The photography and locations are lush and beautiful – when it opens, the film suggesting something of big-budget thrillers of the era like Basic Instinct (1992), Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon (1992) or the earlier Theresa Russell starring Black Widow (1987). With just another twist of the dial, this could easily have been a work of film noir.
Husband and wife Mark Harmon and Theresa Russell on holiday
As in Don’t Look Now, Roeg uses cinematography and editing to suggest something lurking beneath the placid surface – a statue on the ocean floor, a passport floating forgotten in the water from the abandoned paddle-boat. The film even ventures inside Theresa Russell’s thoughts as she sits confused in the hospital waiting room and at other points throughout the film. The artistry employed leads you to expect amazing things. When Mark Harmon returns from the dead and keeps dying and coming to life, it feels as though Cold Heaven is heading well into horror movie territory, even if the explanation for what is going on eludes one.
On the other hand, the latter third or so of the film heads in bizarre directions. Throughout the film is filled with Catholic iconography – statues underwater, visits to chapels of historic significance, miraculous butterflies, while the end of the film culminates in an apparent Miracle with the appearance of a cross on the cliffside. The latter seems to stop the problems occurring to Mark Harmon, although it is not clear what how his resurrections are tied to the Catholic themes. Nevertheless, the position the film arrives at by the end – the confirmation of a miracle, Theresa Russell’s adulterous wife settling back in to her marriage – is an undeniably conservative one that reaffirms Catholic faith.
The film is adapted from a 1983 novel by Brian Moore, a novelist and screenwriter from Northern Ireland who has a history of writing on Catholic themes. Moore is known for the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966) and other films such as The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), Catholics (1973), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987) and Black Robe (1991). On the other hand, Cold Heaven seems a scratch of the head for a film made by Nicolas Roeg who has given all indication elsewhere that he rejected religion and/or celebrated sexual diversity. It seems almost the complete antithesis of the rest of the works that Roeg made throughout his career.
Nicolas Roeg’s other genre films are:– Don’t Look Now (1973), a film about precognition; the sf film The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) about an alienated alien visitor; the surrealist Dennis Potter collaboration Track 29 (1988); the wonderfully grotesque Roald Dahl children’s adaptation The Witches (1990); and Puffball (2007) about witchcraft and pregnancy. Roeg was also originally assigned to direct the remake of Flash Gordon (1980), which would have been most interesting to see.
