A Walk in the Clouds Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

A Walk in the Clouds Blu-ray Movie Review

Not a walk to remember.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 25, 2011

Mexican director Alfonso Arau had a surprise hit in 1992 with his magical realism-infused love story Like Water for Chocolate, but his follow-up and first American film, 1995’s A Walk in the Clouds, is an overwrought, let’s-try-real-hard-to-make-em-like-they-used-to melodrama that’s almost comically bad. Picture a commercial for The Olive Garden: the wilting attempts at seeming genuinely ethnic, the smarmy actors smiling like their paychecks depend on it, the soppy sentiments about how “when you’re here, you’re family.” Well, A Walk in the Clouds is basically the cinematic equivalent. It’s cloying, inauthentic, and just about as bloated as your stomach after a big old greasy plate of pasta. You’ll feel like taking a nap after this one—if you make it to the end without falling asleep anyway, that is.

Keanu Reeves, everyone’s favorite trout-mouthed actor, plays Sgt. Paul Sutton, a Handsome War Hero who returns to San Francisco in 1945 after a traumatic four-year tour in the Pacific. His perilous combat experience gave him plenty of pause to think and write endless letters about, you know, like, the kind of life he wants to have and stuff—the house, the white picket fence, the dog, the kids—but when he finally reunites with his ditzy wife (Debra Messing), she confesses to having never read any of his prolific correspondence. See, they had one of those whirlwind, got-married-on- Sunday-shipped-off-to-war-on-Monday romances, and they barely actually know each other. Plus, she seems like a bit of a floozy. Obviously, their relationship is only going to last long enough to provide a convenient impediment to the plot.

Having returned to his pre-war job as a traveling chocolate salesman—really—Paul embarks on a business trip to Sacramento and Meets Cute with Victoria Aragon (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a Stanford grad student on her way home to Napa Valley, where her large Mexican-American family owns a vineyard called Las Nubes. Yes, “the clouds,” where much walking will inevitably take place. There’s a spark of attraction between them, but there’s a major complication: Victoria got knocked up by one of her profs, and she’s worried that her traditionalist father, Alberto (Giancarlo Giannini), will explode when he finds out. Paul, clearly on no real timeline, proffers a suggestion—he’ll go home with her for the night, pose as her husband, and then run off in the morning, making it look like he’s left her for good. That way, he can take the blame for her illegitimate bun in the oven. He slips a gold, tin-foil ring from one of his chocolates onto her finger, and the ruse is complete.

Now, of course, we all know that this is just a contrived set-up to allow Paul and Victoria to fall in love. We know a happy-ever-after ending is inevitable. We can already see the closing kiss they share and hear the swelling orchestra behind them. What a film like this needs, then, is a compelling second act, a series of complications and conflicts that will make that ending plausible and give the audience reason to care. Unfortunately, A Walk in the Clouds overplays the histrionics to sometimes unintentionally hilarious effect. The first sign that we’re off to a melodramatic start is when Paul and Victoria show up at the vineyard, only to be greeted by her father, glowering and leveling a massive shotgun at them, with an enormous ammo belt strapped over his shoulder. Is he tending his vines or setting out to join la revolución? It’s faintly ridiculous, but this is only the beginning of the over-the-top emotional theatrics. Alberto hates Paul with a seething, frothing, turbid intensity that doesn’t seem even remotely humanly possible. He’s got a bad case of that who is this gringo come to steal my daughter away disease, and Giannini hams it up like a villain in a community theater production, arching his eyebrows and wildly gesticulating to underscore his every angry utterance. To counteract this insanity, we have Victoria’s avuncular grandpa (Anthony Quinn), a vaguely Gabriel Garcia Marquez-ish patriarch who takes a sudden shine to Paul after om-nom-nomming on one of our blank-faced protagonist’s bon-bons.

The story makes its twists and turns dutifully. Paul agrees to stay for another, and yet another night, gets sucked into the Aragon’s family routine— including an admittedly joyous harvest celebration, the best scene in the film—and finds himself pining for a real relationship with his fake wife. Meanwhile, Alberto smells something fishy and storms around the house, fuming, intent on exposing whatever lie Victoria is concealing from him. When the ugly truth eventually comes out, it ignites a literal fire—think a really maudlin take on Days of Heaven’s climactic inferno—that threatens the family’s livelihood but also serves a purifying purpose. Alberto, a proud man, is humbled, Paul is accepted into the family—after an oh- so-opportune annulment from his philandering wife, natch—and love conquers all. Sigh.

Or, heave, depending on how nauseated maudlin emotion makes you. Director Alfonso Arau goes all out with big sweeping sentiment here, both narratively and visually, bathing the film’s rather fake-looking sets in nostalgically amber swathes of light, suggesting golden hour at some hypothetical theme park version of Napa Valley. The romance between Paul and Victoria is just as hokey. Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, perhaps best known now for her turn in The Machinist, is suitably sultry—she goes into a near orgasmic frenzy whilst stomping grapes, her skirt hiked high—but Keanu’s Bill and Ted vocal inflections seem woefully out of place in a film set in the 1940s. I don’t think he’s as bad an actor as most folks make him out to be, but he’s definitely miscast here. He just doesn’t gel with Sánchez-Gijón; he’s robotic where she’s organic, vacant where she’s expressive. Sour grapes, indeed.

A Walk in the Clouds Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Walk in the Clouds waltzes onto Blu-ray with a nicely detailed 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer. The film isn't about to win any awards from videophiles for stunning clarity or color, but it appears to have been reproduced faithfully here, with no evidence of strong edge enhancement. (Although there are a few scenes that seem to be subject to some mild—that is, not overly distracting—DNR.) Plus, the print itself is in good condition, with few specks and no real debris. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's lush lighting setups provide wide-ranging contrast and strong black levels—see the scene in the Aragon family kitchen, with late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows—and while some colors seem a bit oversaturated, they're at least consistently dense. Clarity, however, is variable; sometimes the image is ultra-crisp, revealing the finest textures on the actors' clothes and faces, and elsewhere the picture is soft and spongy. Some light artifacts occasionally clutter out-of-focus portions of the frame, but otherwise, compression issues are kept to a minimum. Fans will probably find the upgrade from the DVD worth it.

A Walk in the Clouds Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is actually two separate experiences. For most of the film, you'll hear a dialogue-driven presentation that has sufficient presence and dynamic richness but lacks any sense of rear-channel immersion beyond some extremely quiet and only occasional ambience. And that's okay. Vocals are clean and clear, the music mix has adequate depth, and the relatively few sound effects are broadcast with clarity. Then there are the three of four flashback scenes to the war in the Pacific, which explode with whizzing bullets, cross-channel shellfire, and, well, big explosions. Obviously, these offer more bang—so to speak—for your buck. There's nothing here that will cause you to seek out A Walk in the Clouds for home theater demo purposes—no surprise there—but the track suits the melodramatic material well. English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering.

A Walk in the Clouds Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only bonus materials on the disc are a short electronic press kit featurette (SD, 5:20) and a theatrical trailer (SD, 2:32).

A Walk in the Clouds Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Walk in the Clouds is about as authentic as an Olive Garden commercial. That is, not very. Some mushy romance fans may get swept up in put-on grandiosity of it all, but if anything, the film is a reminder of why they don't make 'em like they used to.