THE VALLEY OBSCURED BY THE CLOUDS Movie Review

La Vallee

At the height of its power, the cinema can tap in to the sensibilities of a generation so profoundly that an entire culture can be influenced, whether the film be Breathless, Easy Rider, or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then again, few sights are sorrier than a talented filmmaker's attempt to tap into the “youth culture” with high-toned, swanky teensploitation pix like Barbet Schroeder's 1972 The Valley Obscured by the Clouds. Still, few hippie pictures looked as good as this one, thanks to Nestor Almendros's lush widescreen location cinematography in the jungles of New Guinea. The plot has something to do with an establishment functionary's wife (Bulle Ogier) learning to get down and go natural in the forest while looking for the valley of the gods with some of society's dropouts. The constant Pink Floyd on the soundtrack fills in any of those pesky narrative gaps that tend to crop up when a movie has no plot. Schroeder must have awakened quickly from this experience (quicker than the audience, at least), because his next directorial effort was the bold, alarming documentary General Idi Amin Dada, which put Schroeder and Almendros in the middle of a very different jungle, and without Pink Floyd. But it was his next fiction film, the memorable, shocking, surprising Maîtresse, that would finally gain Schroeder recognition as a directorial force to be reckoned with.

NEXT STOP … More, In the White City, Apocalypse Now

1972 106m/C FR Bulle Ogier, Michael Gothard, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Jerome Beauvarlet, Monique Giraudy. D: Barbet Schroeder; W: Barbet Schroeder; C: Nestor Almendros; M: Pink Floyd. VHS FCT, WAR, BTV