A Walk in the Clouds Review

dir by Alfonso Arau

Victoria Aragon (played by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), the daughter of Alberto Aragon (Giancarlo Giannini), a Mexican-American patriarch who has amassed great wealth for his family by running a vineyard in the Napa Valley, does not want to return home from graduate school as she is newly pregnant, and the father, a certain professor from her master’s program, has written her a letter, disavowing his commitment to her, professing that he is a “free spirit” and thus cannot marry her. A Walk in the Clouds was released in 1995 (a year which can seem like ancient history to viewers today, and a good time for a period drama in its own right) is set in 1945 after the end of the second World War. Paul Sutton (played by a young Keanu Reeves) comes to Victoria’s rescue and agrees to play the role of her husband to ease her transition back home on the vineyard, and most importantly, to mitigate the consequences of her father’s temper. An undercurrent to this already very dramatic charade is the fact that Paul is technically still married to Betty, his sweetheart that he married on a whim just before leaving for the war.

As an international co-production between the U.S. and Mexico, the intersection of cultural forces offscreen mirrors that of the drama and content onscreen and is the driving conception at the root of this film as much as the physical roots of the vineyard of the Spanish Aragon family where much of the filming and narrative takes place. In that respect, the film establishes itself as a story that is as much about the marriage of cultures as it is about the climbing vines of the marriage between the two protagonists, Paul Sutton and Victoria Aragon, that the film culminates in.

A paradigm of this cultural collision onscreen is apparent in a caustic moment of dialogue exchanged between the patriarch, Aragon father Alberto, and his son. The Aragon son comes home from college and discovers that his sister, Victoria, is getting married to Paul. He introduces himself to Paul as “Pete.” When his father overhears this, he is deeply unsettled and asks his son sarcastically, “Who’s Pete? I don’t know any Pete; I know I pay a fortune in tuition to Stanford University for a Pedro Alberto Aragon Limantour. Maybe I am paying for the wrong person, and I should stop the check!” (0:51:10) Such dialogue is demonstrative of the subtle and constant control that the patriarch of the Aragon family exercises: a fierce sense of control that is the fulcrum of the overarching drama of the entire film, and one that is only exacerbated by the arrival of a “gringo” son-in-law. With notable courage, the team does not shy away from representing the patriarch’s bitterness towards modern mores and challenges to tradition. In well-executed aesthetic flourishes, his corrosive attitude and emotional energy becomes physically embodied and dramatized, most especially at the end of the film, when the vineyard is entirely set aflame by a lantern mistakenly tossed aside during a violent altercation between him and his son-in-law.

Critics have labelled the film as a romantic period drama, and it is that, but I would argue that its broader classification falls under the genre of melodrama. It is important when watching this film to keep in mind these melodramatic conventions that are at play entirely throughout - sensationalized events, clear-cut distinctions between good and evil, a focus on intense emotional experiences, somewhat simplified or “stock” characters, exaggerated plotting and subplots - so as not to discount the film as mawkish. The film certainly is sentimental, but it is that way for highly technical purposes. There are several major scenes in the film that come to mind as adeptly serving the melodramatic conventions. One of these is the borderline tragic “frost” scene, when the grapes at the vineyard have been subsumed by an early spring frost, followed shortly after by the grand harvest scene that occurs about halfway through the film. Both the frost and harvest scenes deploy spectacle as a melodramatic mode of presenting the subject matter with greatly stylized, theatrical framing. The use of spectacle is a personal favorite in this genre for the way that it culls many themes that are woven through a singular work of art together for a scene and turbocharges the work’s messaging all at once, drawing these themes and symbols together in an invigorating synthesis. It then elevates them to a level of perception that is more readily accessible for the viewer, in a sense, showing the viewer how they all fit together. It is a technique that would benefit all genres if applied more broadly, albeit on a smaller, less metatextual scale.

To save the grapes in the frost scene heaters must be installed throughout the rows of grapevines. But that alone is not enough. The vineyard is vast and the Aragon family, experienced with many such plights, has the method to defrost the grapes. They each place wing-like apparatuses across their arms and backs, wings that resemble those of a butterfly, and gently flap the wings up and down, bringing the heat down onto the grapes with wind. The actors are transformed into wind instruments that parallel those used to create the music score in the background (flutes, clarinets, horns), composed by Maurice Jarr, who also wrote the scores for Lawrence of Arabia, Passage to India, Dead Poets Society, and Jacob’s Ladder. The camera captures at one point in the scene, in a stunning overhead shot, the family and farmers beating the wings in unison, a spectacular frame that synthesizes the film’s themes of nature, family commitment, and perhaps even with its pseudo-Christian imagery, spirituality too. The harvest scene that ensues, after the grapes are saved and ripened, is no less arresting. Again, viewers observe an idealized scene that melds ideas of nature, family, and the spirit, with tens of woman “crushing the grapes” with their feet, in a dance, in a massive vat. It is a picturesque, idealized vision of health and harvest that contrasts in a powerful way the tension of Victoria’s carrying of an illegitimate child, and in doing so, compels viewers to reflect deeply on this issue of the film and its implications for Victoria, Paul, her family, and society at large.

There are many other beautiful aesthetic details that are woven throughout: on the first night at the vineyard, the family shares the Aragon grandmother’s famous “pumpkin flower soup”; when Victoria and Paul first arrive at the vineyard, prior to meeting the family, Paul bestows fake wedding bands upon both of them – plastic gold rings that encase a kind of specialty chocolate that he carries in his luggage (his job, prior to leaving for the war, was selling chocolate). The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Tree of Life) lends to the film a deep sense of searching and discovery with his sweeping, multi-dimensional framing, which fits the melodrama genre well. There are quite a few shots interspersed with this pronounced degree of movement that are surprisingly still, almost like still life paintings, and mostly capturing the Napa vineyard. They are almost evocative of a Rembrandt landscape, though of course the California winery setting being at a remove from the Dutch lowlands. The choice alters the tempo of the film dramatically (what isn’t dramatic about this film?) and for good measure, as it invites the viewer into a deep appreciation of the setting.

I became particularly interested in thinking about the modality of charade that suffuses the film. I think that one could analyze nearly every aspect of this film through the lens of charade. Though I will spare you that full analysis, in terms of thinking about the film through this lens, I found myself incessantly urged to consider how the notion of family and commitment to family is an ongoing charade until a legacy is built. The film serves to remind viewers that family and legacy is not something any of us are entitled to, really; they are conventions that are built. A Walk in the Clouds for all its dreamy idealism, is a practical film too; it acknowledges the dream of family harmony while showing how it is a dream that the members must continue dreaming and sustaining together, or the dream, alongside the legacy, dies.