Movie of Missed Preferences In our country, the film is known primarily to fans of Pink Floyd. Their album Obsured by Clouds ("Tightened by Clouds) is the soundtrack of the movie Valley. Rick Wright's humming keyboards, Gilmour's tearful solo, Nick Mason's monotonous rhythm of drums, in the frame - the mountains of New Guinea, covered with clouds. This is how the film begins, and then the final credits can be played. If you’re watching a movie because of Pink Floyd, the fun is behind you. Joke.
Then begins the story of a rich spoiled Parisian wife of a diplomat and a boutique owner, who is in search of exotic native goods for her store. She falls in love with free traveler Olivier and joins a hippie group (Olivier is part of the group). Together they go to a closed zone for tourists, in the jungle, where the tribes of Papuans, leading a primitive lifestyle, live. The symbolic purpose of the journey is the Valley covered with clouds.
The main disadvantage is that Pink Floyd wrote music without seeing the film, based on the words of the director and the script, and therefore the music in the film is frankly lacking. Approximately in the middle, the theme of the erotic-spiritual search for the heroine, apparently, got tired of Schroeder, and he enthusiastically began to shoot Papuans and their rituals. Everything turns into a quality documentary, and you just have to fantasize what kind of ethnic music Pink Floyd could compose for these scenes. However, what to do, the rites are completed, and the director has to return to the frankly boring main plot and lead his characters to the Valley.
It is not surprising that after watching, not the main characters, but ethnic scenes remain in memory.
The success of the film, apart from the documentary filming, shows that there is no spiritual contact between Europeans and Aborigines. Hippies participate in their rituals, apply coloring in the style of the aborigines, but for Europeans it all remains a carnival, the meaning of which they are not given.
In general, there was a certain potential in the script to turn out a more or less interesting and deep film, so that when creating the soundtrack, the musicians could turn around in full power, but Barbet Schroeder failed to realize these opportunities.
4 out of 10