Par-delà les nuages (1995) - film review

An American film director visits exotic locations in Europe, recalling tales of love and desire.  On his travels, he meets and is instantly attracted to young woman who admits to having murdered her father...

Michelangelo Antonioni’s final film, Par-delà les nuages, is based on his collection of short stories, That Bowling Alley on the Tiber.  It consists of four stories of passionate yet unfulfilled love, linked by a director’s philosophical musings about his art.  It was filmed in Ferrara, Portofino, Aix en Provence and Paris, mainly in French, but with English narration and a short Italian segment.

Although Antonioni is rated is one of the genuinely great film directors of the Twentieth Century, this film is a major disappointment, from practically every standpoint.

John Malkovich’s talents are wasted as he is miscast as the director-narrator that links the various story strands of the film.  He is instantly dislikeable as he murmurs the most unpardonably pretentious nonsense which does the art of film making no favours at all.

The script is general mediocre, whilst each segment of the film (except, possibly the last, the only part of the film that is worth seeing) feels cold, soulless and dull.  The fact that the four love stories are virtually identical merely heightens the sense of monotony which sets in within the first ten minutes of the film.  The use of three languages (French, English and Italian) is also off-putting and seems to fulfil no useful function, except to allow the director to increase his pool of available acting talent - and even that appears to have backfired.  The acting is non-committal and lacklustre, which is astonishing considering the names that make up the cast.  Only Fanny Ardant and Vincent Perez appear to have anything to offer, with both actors up their usually fine form.

The whole thing is so badly assembled, slow, lifeless and pointless that any redeeming features the film may have had (the sumptuous, eloquent photography, for instance) are easily forgotten.  The exploitative over-use of nude bedroom scenes feels wholly inappropriate and drains rather than adds to the passion of the film.  The film’s worst feature is its appalling soundtrack which varies is at best bland, at worst nauseatingly repetitive.

It is a shame that Antonioni felt he had to make this film.  His ill health (he was virtually paralysed after suffering a stroke ten years earlier) certainly had a marked effect on his ability to weave the magic of his earlier years.  The film probably owes more to his assistant director, Kim Wender, than to the great man himself.  Look closely, however, and you may glimpse some signs of the once great director.  However, that spark of genius is buried beneath many layers of insipidity.

© James Travers 1999

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