Par-delà les nuages

SPOILER: After the ecstatic reviews it received in the press, I found this film

disappointing. I can only imagine that the critics were being kind to an

ill, old man of 82 and overly respectful of the reputation of a once

great film director. Visually it is very attractive with beautiful shots of a lakeside

village and very atmospheric and poetic shots of alleyways and streets

in rain and mist. But when it comes to the actions and motivations of

the people in the film it is a let-down. I like to be able to believe in

and identify with the characters in a film and I couldn't do that here.

There are four stories in the film and I will mention only two - the two

that seem to me the most trite and pointless.

The first story stars two extremely good-looking newcomers to the screen

(Kim Rossi Stuart & Ines Sastre.) He stops his car to ask her the way to the nearest hotel, and because he

is so good-looking she gives him the name of her hotel. They see each

other during the day and when they retire to their rooms at night across

the landing from each other, she lies awake waiting for the knock on the

door that never comes. In the morning she leaves early without seeing

him. It is two years before they see each other again and this time

their relationship progresses a little further - they get to be naked on

the bed together. But he behaves in a very odd way indeed; for some five

minutes he runs his hands over her body within a millimetre of her skin

but without actually touching her. What she thinks is going on as she

lies there passively, feeling nothing, is anybody's guess. Then after

five minutes, still without having touched her, he gets up abruptly and

without speaking a word leaves. Is that the action of a sane man? You

wonder why he bothered to take his clothes off if he intended to do so

little. She, presumably feeling hurt and frustrated, rushes to the

window to see him walking off into the distance. They give each other a

feeble wave. End of story. John Malkovich's deep lugubrious voice-over

tells us that he behaved in this way either because of folly or pride.

Well it was certainly folly - and certainly unbelievable. Or could it

have been impotence? Could this story be saying something about the

impotence of an old man?

In another segment of the film, Malkovich's character is attracted to a

young woman (Sophia Marceau) he sees in a shop window. He can't take his

eyes off her and just stands there entranced. She reacts in the same

way. He goes into the shop and their silent fascination continues. I

felt uncomfortable for both of them. Was something momentous about to

happen? It would seem so and our interest is awakened, our expectations

aroused. But no; we are just being lead up the garden path to nowhere.

He sits outside and eventually she joins him. She tells him only one

thing about herself, that she has murdered her father by stabbing him

twelve times. Malkovich shows no surprise and the fact seems irrelevant.

They then go to her place and they have sex. But this is not the

beginning of some deep, meaningful relationship as the earlier

enchantment would lead us to suppose. Oh no. When he's had his sex he's

had enough and like the previous male protagonist, he just walks away.

Another wretched piece of behaviour and

I was stunned by this film. I have been renting Antonioni's films/rediscovering them, and this film showed me the climax and fruits of his 50 years of directing. What an eye for setting, color, and detail! I have never seen such visual beauty and poetry filmed before. I had to stop after the first story and hold back the tears. Yes, beauty moves me, like it moved Keats to write Ode on a Grecian Urn. This movie is made for the mature, emotionally and intellectually, audience. Those hoping to see physical action and soap opera will be disappointed. I will have to see this film several times before I can truly appreciate it and judge it. This film should be required viewing for all cinematographers and directors.

Possibly a truly great film, on the order of Kurosawa's Dreams.

Although I'm a big fan of his work, and specially his revolutionary masterpieces, I would say this film did not live up to my expectations regarding Antonioni's abilities. In one word, I found myself utterly bored. I could not bring myself to share any emotions with the characters (no matter how hard I tried) and finally gave up on watching it. Malkovich was poorly casted and instead of bringing warmth and real human emotions to the character, made it a drag and sometimes impossible to follow. There are no real links for this four short stories, and least of all Malkovich's ramblings and philosophical (attempts at best) remarks bordering on sunday sermons. If you want good quality film, better stick to the director's earlier works. Sorry!!!

A summing up of all the aging, ailing Antonioni's career themes, strengths (visual beauty, a sense of mystery and poetry) and weaknesses (pretentious stiff dialogue, ideas that are sometimes not really all that deep, a penchant for getting beautiful actresses undressed without a lot of justification).

But this is also something quite different than he's ever done, in that these are a series of short stories, loosely tied together by sequences of John Malkovich playing a director looking for his next film (Wim Wenders helped the physically limited Antonioni by directing the Malkovich sections).

By keeping the pieces smaller, I found this more fun, and more moving than most of Antonioni's films. There isn't the chance for the ideas to run as thin, and there seems to be more empathy for his characters now. Humans may be screwed up, but at least Antonioni no longer stands above them judging. One moment actually brought me near tears. The film captures the lonely enigmatic solitude of the artist, and of life itself.

This is a special film if you know the context. Antonioni, in his eighties, had been crippled by a stroke. Mute and half paralyzed, his friends -- who incidentally are the best the film world has -- arranged for him to 'direct' a last significant film. The idea is that he can conjure a story into being by just looking at it. So we have a film: about a director who conjures stories by simple observation. And the matter of the (four) stories is about how the visual imagination defines love.

The film emerges by giving us the tools to bring it into being through our own imagination. The result is pure movie-world: every person (except the director) is lovely in aspect or movement. Some of these women are ultralovely, and they exist in a dreamy misty world of sensual encounter. There is no nuance, no hint that anything exists but what we see; no desire is at work other than what we create.

I know of no other film that so successfully manipulates our own visual yearning to have us create the world we see. He understands something about not touching. No one understands Van Morrison visually like he does. Morrison's Celtic space music is predicated on precisely the same notion: the sensual touch that implies but doesn't physically touch.

Antonioni's redhead wife appears, appropriately as the shopkeeper and she also directs a lackluster 'making of' film that is on the DVD.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.