Reviews

Watching Gwyneth play the insipid role of Gwyneth with her blue blood accent, and Aaron Eckhart playing a gridiron player who somehow loved nothing better than a poetry touchdown, I thought, the best one might do to salvage this tragic film would be to swap the leads over. Their Victorian counterparts were wonderful, with a depth to their portrayals utterly convincing. That said, I guess the shallow romance of the modern protagonists (as depicted by the screenplay - Byatt's writing being the superior) was perhaps best befitted by the actors who played them. Enough range in their beings to slap together a limerick perhaps, nothing more though.

Selecting Sheltering Sky from the quagmire of aging weekly videos, I was drawn in by the idea of the exotic locations, the Moroccan backdrop, the vast African interior. Watching the film, yes, it was easy to sit there and convincingly say, this is barely B-grade, self-indulgent with shifts in plot and story which move from the despairing to the bizarre, and an ending with the author narrating himself his philosophical underpinning to the whole journey, nay, the fly blown, turgid fan whirring meaning of life. Yet, strangely, for reasons which are perhaps merely personality traits leading me to the melancholy,philosophical or to the want for dusty fans and raw African experience myself, I found myself completely transfixed from beginning to end. It may even be that my own husband has dragged me to Tanger, and further inward, and that how it felt in the film firmly mirrored how the place felt to be there. Malkovich's character is hardly endearing; he seems a pretty selfish bastard, but maybe just searching, maybe for a partner, maybe for a male lover, maybe a shrink. Yet Malkovich does this so convincingly, it's hard not to be mesmerised by his droll protestations and the angst and torment he endures towards the pivotal scenes of his life. Deborah Winger (who I always think of as Wonder Girl and ET) is too whiny on one hand, but you've got to admire her for what she goes through with her husband 'Port' and her willingness to get on with being a sexual being when push comes to shove and he's never going to do it for her. The scenes in the deep African interior are transfixing for their wild terrain, the harshness of survival, the mystique and ritual of a world so removed from anything western that it's spellbinding. And, finally, Timothy Spall. This was my first introduction to an actor whose character roles are always unique, multi dimensional and captivating. As the lurid son, a little wonky in the head, and slobbering like an ever-thirsty dog, everything from his mannerisms, tone of voice and subtle implications of mother-son relationship are intricately woven to create a very odd, and frighteningly plausible, character. As for the existential ending, well, maybe you need to pop off to Tangiers and sit in a dull café room today, still with the heat and the flies and a tall glass of peppermint tea to get out of it something which gels for you. Perhaps then, life as Paul Bowles saw it, as Bertolucci imagined it, might well seep through your bones or weigh as heavily upon you as the vast, sheltering sky that is at once confounding and utterly liberating.