Faraway, So Close

Wenders' follow-up to Wings of Desire is a considerable disappointment, a sprawling metaphysical caper movie which has much in common with his previous picture, Until the End of the World. Beginning a few years after Damiel (Ganz) hung up his wings to settle down with Marion (Dommartin), the film follows the angel Cassiel (Sander) as he too becomes mortal. Life doesn't throw him any great romance, however - instead, he finds himself in an extraordinary convoluted (and extremely tedious) mystery thriller. We get jokes, whimsy, hijinks and escapades; we get Lou Reed strumming a new song; we even get bungee-jumping at the climax. What's lacking is any sense of form. The movie meanders for two and a half hours, has glaring continuity gaps, and repeatedly confuses self-consciousness with irony, sincerity with significance. There are grace notes here, but Wenders' ambitions seem far, far away.