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1995
Directed by
Michelangelo Antonioni / Wim Wenders
112 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

Beyond The Clouds

Beyond The Clouds is a kind of compendium a of Antonioni’s career and if you are not familiar with that it would be worth delving into in order to appreciate this, his final feature film.

The screenplay was adapted from four sketches from the director's book, That Bowling Alley on the Tiber and was worked on by Wim Wenders who wrote its prologue and epilogue and helped Antonioni, who was 83 at the time, complete the film after a stroke that left him severely incapacitated.

The film consists of four love stories (and an amusing interlude involving Cezanne) told from the perspective of a film director (John Malkovich) who having completed one film is contemplating his next. Those familiar with Antonioni’s work will, unsurprisingly, find the director’s characteristic auteurial style and thematic concerns well to the fore and in that respect the film offers some measure of satisfaction but dramatically is little more than some tasteful photography of urban and rural settings and of men and women making love to a tastefully understated jazz score and a roster of name actors such as Fanny Ardant, Jean Reno, Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, while Malkovich’s voice-over musing sound like they have been transcribed directly from the director’s notebooks.

 

 

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