La Vallee (aka "The Valley Obscured By Clouds")

La Vallee (aka "The Valley Obscured By Clouds")
by Barbet Schroeder

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DVD Reviews of La Vallee (aka "The Valley Obscured By Clouds")

DVD Review: the mountains and the valley beyond
Summary: 5 Stars

Vivian catches a ride with the stranger and accompanies him back to his camp site. As soon as the two enter the tent they see a couple laying naked together. Vivian is surprised and yet also turned on by these very relaxed living conditions. The hippies live very close to the earth and they want to get even closer. In this very sensually open atmosphere the blonde stranger shows Vivian where they intend to go -- it is a place which has no name because it has never been charted as it is invisible from the sky as it is perpetually obscured by clouds. To the hippies this last unmarked place represents a last promise of paradise. Vivian is skeptical of such notions but she cannot resist the heady atmosphere of dreaminess and sensual freedom that this group represents to her and so she decides to leave her socialite existence for awhile and accompany them to La Vallee.

The story is very simple and Barbet Schroeder's style is almost documentary simple -- Schroeder produced some of the early new wave films but his own films are nothing like those early 1960's films. More and La Vallee do not draw attention to the director as the new wave films did, Schroeders films concentrate on the vagaries of character and what different experiences feels like. The Pink Floyd soundtrack does more than the dialogue in giving us access to what these characters are going through. Though they are united in their search for paradise, each character is also on a very private journey and the music accents both the shared and private aspects of this cross country quest.

One of the most memorable sequences is when the group spends the day with several tribes of New Guinea bushmen who have gathered to recognize their ancestors. Two of the hippies dress in tribal attire and paint themselves and dance along with the tribesman but two do not. Vivian herself does not adorn herself but merely watches the goings-on from a comfortable distance like a journalist while the tall blonde stranger feels a deep depression that he unlike the tribesman will never feel at one with nature. At another point Vivian too will attempt to merge with nature with the help of a hallucinogen but it is only a momentary union. And so the film is dreamy and yet also it is a kind of lament that certain dreams will never be more than dreams.

Along with the subtle but perfect mood music by Pink Floyd the cinematography is absolutely exquisite -- New Guinea has never looked so good.

I like both More and La Vallee equally well. And yes Michelangelo Antonio's Zabriskie Point is also very good and also features Pink Floyd as well as the Grateful Dead. I think Barbet Schroeder's films are much more organic though and so more pleasing to the instincts than Antonioni's film. Antonioni is very intellectual and even when he gets organic he arrives there by intellectual routes. Herzogs Aguirre is excellent and it is similar in that it is also a search for a mythic paradise but its vision of nature and man is much harsher. Theres a lyric magic in Barbet Schroeders films that simply does not exist anywhere else.

Description of La Vallee (aka "The Valley Obscured By Clouds")