Antonioni Makes Disappointing Comeback With `Beyond The Clouds'

Movie review XX "Beyond the Clouds," with John Malkovich, Fanny Ardant, Marcello Mastroianni, Sophie Marceau, Peter Weller, Vincent Perez, Irene Jacob. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, from a script by Antonioni, Wim Wenders and Tonino Guerra. 113 minutes. Grand Illusion, today through Wednesday (theater closed Thanksgiving Day). No rating; includes nudity.

Nearly five years ago, shortly before this handsome, oddly unsatisfying movie went into production, Michelangelo Antonioni was presented with a special Academy Award for the body of his work.

"His visual style has ensured him a place as one of the greatest artists of our time," said the academy's then-president Arthur Hiller, when he announced the award. During the heyday of foreign films in the U.S., Antonioni's name became synonymous with the most challenging adult cinema.

The extraordinary "L'Avventura" (1960) created what one critic called "a new mood, a new emotional rhythm," and the movie instantly shot to the top of international critics' lists of the all-time top 10 films. With the sensational "Blow-Up" (1966), Antonioni earned a couple of Oscar nominations, as well as audiences that had never attended an art house. Later, he directed Jack Nicholson in one of his best pictures, "The Passenger" (1975).

But for the past quarter of a century, Antonioni has been largely inactive. Disabled by a stroke in 1985, he tried a comeback with "Beyond the Clouds," an all-star collection of short stories

told by a movie director played by John Malkovich. They're drawn from Antonioni's diaries and his story collection, "That Bowling Alley on the Tiber."

Sophie Marceau (the new Bond girl in "The World Is Not Enough") plays a homicidal shop girl who tells Malkovich that she's stabbed her father 12 times. Fanny Ardant is a woman who deserts her unfaithful husband (Peter Weller) and tries to rent Jean Reno's apartment. Vincent Perez plays a young man obsessed with Irene Jacob, who's headed for a convent, while Ines Sastre and Kim Rossi-Stuart play a couple who deliberately never consummate their relationship.

Jeanne Moreau and the late Marcello Mastroianni (who co-starred in Antonioni's "La Notte") appear together briefly, Mastroianni as a painter. The soundtrack includes music by Van Morrison, U2 and Brian Eno.

In spite of all that star power, there's a reason it's taken four years for "Beyond the Clouds" to reach Seattle. Antonioni, who turned 87 this year, was too ill to complete the project by himself, Wim Wenders shot the prologue and epilogue, and the resulting film never quite comes together. There's a pretentious, moralistic tone to the summing-up of a couple of stories; with the exception of Ardant and Perez, the actors seem more like puppets than people.

But even an Antonioni misfire has its visual pleasures, and cinematographers Alfio Contini and Robby Muller come up with several striking shots that recall the distinctive use of architecture and landscape in the director's finest work.