Claudio Carvalho Marie Davenport (Theresa Russell) is married with Dr. Alex Davenport (Mark Harmon) and is having a love affair with Dr. Daniel Corvin (James Russo). Marie plans to leave Alex and move in together with Daniel that has just left his wife Anna Corvin (Julie Carmen). Marie believes that the best moment to tell her decision to her husband is in Acapulco, Mexico, where he will go to a medical convention. While sailing with Marie, Alex swims and is hit on the head by a motor boat. He goes to the hospital but dies; however before the autopsy, his body disappears from the morgue. Marie returns to Carmel and out of the blue, she meets Alex alive in her hotel room. Marie, who was raised Catholic but is atheist, recalls a vision that she had one year ago when Virgin Mary pointed out to her the location where a sanctuary should be built and seeks out Monsignor Cassidy (Richard Bradford). Is Alex's resurrection a test of her faith? "Cold Heaven" is a weird film indicated for religious people, more specifically to Catholics. The story about an adulterous woman raised Catholic but that lost her faith in God when her mother passed away is strange and has a moralist conclusion. The plot keeps the mystery until the moment that Marie discloses her vision to the priest. At least, the sexy Theresa Russell is worthwhile watching by her fans. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Desejo Selvagem" ("Wild Desire")

Chris Well, well....Roeg touched a bit of a nerve there, didn't he? He was a genius while he was cataloguing his various characters' descents into psychosis for a couple of decades, but as soon as he has the bad taste to suggest that redemption (or even some good advice) might be found in the bad old Catholic church, the hipper-than-thou alternative movie crowd gets extra vicious. Worse still, Theresa Russell's character - faced with experiences that nothing in her avowedly rationalist outlook has an explanation for, is unwillingly forced to deal with those experiences on another level - that of the spiritual. You know, the realm of the ignorant and superstitious, the sort of thing that the art-house cinephiles are supposed to be above. Oh, the horror... So she finds her marriage - the idea that it might be a uniquely important commitment - affirmed by what seems uncomfortably like divine intervention. People who find this idea prima facie offensive could maybe ask themselves why they instinctively jump into attack mode at being challenged to take seriously the idea of a spiritual dimension to their lives. But they probably won't. Sure, this film has some problems, notably Talia Shire's delirious hamwork as the overwrought nun, 1950s-style attire and all. And the dialogue between Marie Davenport and the young priest in their last scene is straight out of the Spellbound School of Glib Interpretations (though Hitchcock's movie escaped similar charges due to the source of wisdom having impeccably secular credentials as a Freudian psychoanalyst). But, sadly, Nicolas Roeg appears to have copped a critical mauling as much for even asking the question as for the possible answers this film presents.

petershelleyau That the release of this film by director Nicolas Roeg and starring his wife Theresa Russell was delayed for 2 years says a lot about its perceived commercial prospects. The Roeg/Russell partnership's previous titles - Bad Timing, Eureka, Insignificance, and Track 29 - were a good warning, where Russell has been better served by other directors, and Roeg's interest in fractured narrative has left audiences in a quandary.The material here is based on a novel by Brian Moore, which is an exploration of Catholic faith, but the screenplay by Allan Scott makes this seem ludicrous eg The Virgin Mary is seen by a convent, asking for the "building of a sanctuary", and the idea of a dead man coming back to life being a "demonic possession" is dismissed by a priest since "Life and death belong to God, but everything else is ours to decide". We can tell Roeg isn't really interested in providing an explanation to poor Russell, whose Los Angeles pathologist husband Mark Harmon, is supposedly killed in a boating accident during a holiday in Mexico (the book had the holiday in France), when the conclusion is weightless. Much is made of Russell as an unfaithful wife and how it is often the disbelievers that are visited by God, but when we are told of the real meaning of The Virgin Mary's message, it is laughably trite. Roeg uses Moore's plot as a supernatural excuse to present his editing flourishes, with cross-cutting between sleeping Russell, her married lover James Russo, and Harmon in the morgue; Russell and Russo having sex cut against Russo and his wife Julie Carmen fighting; and Roeg's big one, Russell on a Carmel clifftop as The Virgin Mary makes an apocalyptic appearance whilst Russell rolls around in the dirt. The boating accident scene is pleasingly underscored with the music of Stanley Myers, though we get water on the camera, interiors are generally underlit with matching muffled dialogue and Russell's whispered thoughts on the soundtrack, Harmon wears pancake makeup and spits blood, and there is a subjective camera shot with a white veiling. However on the plus side is a scene where Russell is surrounded by butterflies, her Del A Dey-Jones hats, her willingness to appear overweight in a bikini, and the remarkably unmannered performance of Russo. An indication of Roeg's touch is when Russell tells a priest of her vision of The Virgin Mary, where Roeg undermines Russell's acting by cut-aways to the priest and long shots away from her as she paces.

stephen-33 I fear that with this movie and the stultifying Two Deaths, that Roeg has slipped semi-comatose into semi-retirement.I just hope that he can produce one final great classic that will sit alongside, Bad Timing, Performance, Eureka,Walkabout and The Man Who Fell To Earth in his mighty cannon.