Stealing Heaven

Stealing Heaven
Original movie poster
Directed by	Clive Donner
Written by	Marion Meade (historical novel) Chris Bryant, screenplay
Produced by	Andros Epaminondas Simon MacCorkindale Susan George
Starring	Derek de Lint Kim Thomson Denholm Elliott
Music by	Nick Bicât
Distributed by	Rank Film Distributors
Release date	1988 (1988) (UK)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Stealing Heaven is a 1988 film directed by Clive Donner and starring Derek de Lint, Kim Thomson and Denholm Elliott. It is a costume drama based on the French 12th-century medieval romance (a true story) of Peter Abelard and Héloïse and on a historical novel by Marion Meade. This was Donner's final theatrical film, before his death in 2010.

YouTube Encyclopedic

1/3
Views:
39 872
23 404
59 687

Transcription

Plot

Peter Abelard is a famous teacher of philosophy at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, and a champion of reason. At a time when academics are required to observe chastity, he falls in love with one of his students, Héloïse d'Argenteuil, a sixteen-year-old gentlewoman raised in a convent, who has both intellectual curiosity and a rebellious view of the low status of women in 12th-century Europe.

When the relationship is suspected, Heloise's uncle Fulbert, who had other plans for her marriage, works with the bishop of Paris to put a stop to it.^[1] Nevertheless, Abelard and Heloise pursue their relationship; they make love in her bed and also within a barn (they are overheard by a peasant girl when they come) and eventually have a child and later are secretly married. Abelard struggles with himself for acting against the will of God by loving Heloise. Her uncle takes a terrible revenge on Abelard for ruining Heloise's chances of an advantageous match.^[2]

Cast

Derek de Lint as Peter Abelard
Kim Thomson as Heloise d'Argenteuil
Denholm Elliott as Fulbert
Bernard Hepton as Bishop
Kenneth Cranham as Suger
Rachel Kempson as Prioress
Mark Jax as Jourdain
Angela Pleasence as Sister Cecilia
Timothy Watson as François
Patsy Byrne as Agnes
Victoria Burgoyne as Prostitute
Philip Locke as Poussin
Cassie Stuart as Petronilla
Andrew McLean as Gerard
Thomas Lockyer (actor) as Thomas
Mark Audley as Luke
Kai Dominic as Paul
Miki Hewitt as Sister Claire
Yvonne Bryceland as Baroness Lamarck
Vjenceslav Kapural as Baron Lamarck
Ivo Husnjak as Gaston Lamarck
Jeremy Hawk as Ancient Priest
Moniek Kramer as Jeanne
Drago Mitrovic as Priest
Zvonimir Ferencic as Bishop
Eugen Marcelic as Astrolabe
Lela Simecki as Sister Therese

Production

The picture was filmed on location in Yugoslavia.^[3] Denholm Elliott had worked with Donner before, having starred in Nothing But the Best (1964).

Reception

Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called the movie "fascinatingly retrograde", as it "suggests the ‘60s: decade of turbulence, idealism, sex and riot." He notes that the director, Clive Donner, had made his best known films in that decade, such as The Caretaker (1963) and What’s New, Pussycat? (1965). Wilmington is critical of the production and the characterizations and he objects to the omission of the couple’s important surviving love-letters, but he finds the actors easy to watch. "De Lint glows with dedication, Thompson tosses her great Cosmo cover-girl mane ravishingly. Elliott is a fine, squirrelly, sweating villain."^[3]

Caryn James reviewed the picture in The New York Times:

The wonder is not that Stealing Heaven ultimately fails, but that this relatively modest production comes so close to succeeding. Directed by Clive Donner with a small budget, an uneven script and a wonderful cast, Stealing Heaven at times seems like a poor cousin to The Lion in Winter crossed with Camelot and highlighted with steamy sex scenes. But overall, it is a serious telling of the story, suggesting the stateliness and rigidity of the world that the intellectual and sensual Heloise and Abelard resisted.^[4]