The Sheltering Sky
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Year Released: 1990
Rating: 1.0
Paul Bowles' multifaceted novel about memory, travel, experience, sexual ambiguity and exoticism is so thoroughly demystified by Bertolucci that it turns into a story about how dirty and antiquated all these hotels and restaurants in foreign countries are (eww, bugs in the soup; ewww, lack of running water). The last forty minutes - after John Malkovich dies (hope I'm not ruining it for you) - becomes a lengthy travelogue of these strange locales and the odd customs of their inhabitants. Tries to mock the Timothy Spall character and his mother for being 'typically' pompous expatriate Americans, but Malkovich, Debra Winger and Campbell Scott are pretty much the same type people, only less openly flamboyant.
