Head in the Clouds

We should all be grateful that Charlize Theron doesn't take career advice from Halle Berry, or the statuesque South African might have chosen to follow up her Oscar win by fighting crime as Aquagirl. Instead, Theron returns to the screen in writer-director Duigan's four-films-in-one opus. Is Head in the Clouds a university romance between Theron and Townsend set in 1933 Britain? A love triangle set in Paris? An English Patient–style excursion during the Spanish civil war? A spy thriller, with Townsend trying to outwit the Nazis in 1944 occupied France? In the end, the literate film is all of the above, beautifully shot...and dull.