Directed by Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola, Run and The Princess and the Warrior) from an unrealized screenplay by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski (Red, White, and Blue), this is an apparently harmonious collaboration between a couple of fate-chance-coincidence guys. The extended credits sequence, during which a bomb planted in an office wastebasket blows up instead in the cleaning lady's cart, presents a powerful illustration of the theme; and it immediately establishes the intensity of commitment, every carefully selected shot clicking into place with remorseless inevitability. Tykwer in general has toned down his visual ricksiness for the occasion, and cameraman Frank Griebe's soft, smooth, no-gloss color is a thing of beauty throughout. (The Tuscany setting unearths additional things of beauty.) The solemnity never falters, even as the storyline turns preposterous: the grand romance, or amour fou, of Philippa and Filippo, the revenge-seeking Englishwoman who misguidedly planted the bomb, and the Italian policeman who helps her to carry out her revenge. Some big questions arise along the way: How does this grade-school teacher know how to make a time bomb? How is she able to come and go from police headquarters after her escape from custody? Why, if she wants only to kill the right person and not to avoid punishment for killing a few wrong ones, does she go on the lam once she accomplishes her mission? There is no bigger contradiction, though, no greater paradox, than the infinite expressiveness of Cate Blanchett's eyes inside her stiff, sanded, plaster-of-Paris face. With Giovanni Ribisi. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd