Rewind, film: 'Beyond the Clouds' directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders (1995)

Beyond the Clouds
John Malkovich, Sophie Marceau, Jean Reno
Directors: Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders

Clouds are magical when you're young - remember staring up at the sky with your imagination running wild, seeing the endless possibilities of their shapes? But somewhere along the way, we often lose that sense of creativity.

For example, watch Beyond the Clouds - the work of an old man who had long forgotten how to look up. The credits list two directors, but it's well and truly the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, the man responsible for the acclaimed L'Avventura and Blowup.

At the age of 83 and not long after suffering partial paralysis following a stroke, Antonioni started work on his final film armed with a collection of his own short stories, a half-formed screenplay, a cast full of people he owed favours to, a doting wife to literally call the shots, and with German filmmaker Wim Wenders as insurance.

The result is a mishmash. It's a swan song that recycles his visual and theoretical motifs - some of it works, most of it doesn't, but all of it is decidedly Antonioni.

There's a young couple who refuse to destroy the purity of their attraction through consummation; there's a filmmaker drawn to a murderer; there's a love triangle that becomes a four-way; and there's a man who becomes obsessed with a devout Catholic woman. And throughout, each character makes grandiose moral declarations that are either sage-like or silly, depending on how you look at them.

Few will find fault in the finest, and sadly briefest, of the film's segments: a short interlude that re-teams the director with his two La Notte leads, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. Here we experience a Before Sunrise-like journey with its two passionate characters, each discussing the need for copies in our world, be they reproductions of paintings or this very movie mirroring life.

Antonioni died in 2007, but not before he contributed one last time to the anthology film Eros. The segment is a lusty encounter that could've easily fit into Clouds - but the borderline soft-core nature makes it feel like a parody of the aesthetic he helped define and would have rendered this film an utter embarrassment. As it is, Beyond the Clouds is just a slight embarrassment. While it's relevant to remember that many auteurs lose their way in old age, viewers can still be enchanted by hints of Antonioni's genius: philosophical conversations while strolling through sleepy towns, a slow dance yearning for something beyond pure physicality, the clouds rolling dreamily over Aix-en-Provence.

Pavan Shamdasani