BEYOND THE CLOUDS (53)

Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni (and Wim Wenders)

Starring: John Malkovich, Fanny Ardant, Jean Reno

The Pitch: Various stories of relationships and chance encounters, linked by a film director's wanderings around Europe.

Theo Sez: Famous directors beyond a certain age seem curiously drawn to the portmanteau movie (AKIRA KUROSAWA'S DREAMS, THE LITTLE THEATRE OF JEAN RENOIR), but in fact Antonioni's style isn't very well-served by the wispy nature of these short stories. His best films - at least for those of us who never warmed to LA NOTTE and THE RED DESERT - show the stillness behind tumult, often by using the conventions of the thriller format as in BLOW-UP and THE PASSENGER. Here there is only stillness, not an unattractive quality but often a little pointless and frustrating (sample scene: a couple on a bed engage in five (screen) minutes of foreplay - then simply separate). There's little doubt that the narrative asceticism is intentional, or that the slow pace is deliberate. Indeed - again, like many old men's movies - the film frames its message quite explicitly, making its only happy (or "satisfied") character a nun who has renounced worldly pleasures and actually stating that, by forsaking slowness in our daily lives, we lose our souls. This quality of personal statement (whether or not one agrees with the statement) is what lifts it from mere pretentiousness, along with the fact that the images and locations - especially the Italian ones early on, like the deserted playground by the sea - are expertly chosen and often exquisitely beautiful. An unfashionable kind of film, traditional European arthouse, needlessly exhausting and self-consciously "aesthetic"; but somehow hard to dislike as much as one expects to.