Themes: Home From the War, Interracial/Cross-Cultural Romance, Assumed Identities
Main Cast: Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Anthony Quinn, Giancarlo Giannini, Angélica Aragón
Release Year: 1995
Country: US
Run Time: 103 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
In this atmospheric romantic drama, Keanu Reeves plays Paul Sutton, who has just returned home from a stretch in the Army during World War II. Still reeling from the horrors of war, Paul wants to settle down and start a farm, but his wife Betty (Debra Messing), whom he met and impulsively married shortly before shipping out, has arranged for him to take a job as a salesman peddling chocolates. While taking a sales trip to another town, he befriends a beautiful but distraught young woman, Victoria Aragon (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon). While away at college, Victoria met and fell in love with a young man and soon became pregnant; however, when her boyfriend discovered she was expecting, he abandoned her. She returns home full of shame and fearful of her father's reaction. But Paul gets an idea -- he'll pose as her husband and leave after a day or two, so when she's left alone with the child, the disgrace will be on him, not her. Victoria agrees, and Paul joins Victoria as she arrives at her family's estate in the California wine country. Most of the Aragon family take to Paul readily enough, especially Grandfather Don Pedro (Anthony Quinn), but Victoria's father, Alberto (Giancarlo Giannini), senses something amiss between the young couple. A Walk In The Clouds was the first American film from director Alfonso Arau, who previously made the international hit Like Water For Chocolate. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Cynics beware: A Walk in the Clouds is a voluptuously photographed exercise in romanticism that may seduce viewers away from their hard-bitten outlooks. Director Alfonso Arau (Like Water for Chocolate) gives the movie a soft-focus sweetness that might seem marshmallow if not for the work of Giancarlo Giannini and the late Anthony Quinn. Playing Alberto, the stern Mexican father of the lovely Victoria Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Giannini spits the fire and resentment of a wounded dragon outraged at the sudden, suspicious marriage of his daughter to American ex-serviceman Paul Sutton Keanu Reeves. Giannini and screenwriters Robert Mark Kamen and Mark Miller infuse Alberto with the deep emotional pain of someone who loves his family's traditions and hates their collapse. Romance and romanticism are never easy, so Alberto's pain grounds the emotional reality of the movie, as does the innocence displayed by Reeves and Sanchez-Gijon. The tug of war between Alberto and the other principals gives Quinn a chance to shine; he captures just the right tone of whimsy and wisdom as the family patriarch who knows it will work out well in the end. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., All Movie Guide
Evangelina Elizondo - Guadelupe Aragon; Don Amendolia - Father Coturri; Mary Pat Gleason - Bus Driver; Juan Antonio Jimenez - Jose Marie; John Dennis Johnston - Lout #1; Joseph Lindsey - Lout #2; Gregory Paul Martin - Armistead Knox; Macon McCalman - Conductor; Brad Rea - Soldier #2; Ivory Ocean - Truck Driver; Alejandra Flores - Consuelo; Febronio Covarrubias - Jose Manuel; Freddy Rodriguez - Pedro Aragon, Jr.
Credit
Daniel Maltese - Art Director, John Lyons - Casting, Christine Sheaks - Casting, Michael Smuin - Choreography, Bill Johnson - Co-producer, Judy Ruskin - Costume Designer, Newt Arnold - First Assistant Director, David Sosna - First Assistant Director, Alfonso Arau - Director, Don Zimmerman - Editor, James D. Brubaker - Executive Producer, Maurice Jarre - Composer (Music Score), Jose Antonio Garcia - Musical Direction/Supervision, Leo Brouwer - Songwriter, Julie Hewett - Makeup, Rodrigo García - Camera Operator, David Gropman - Production Designer, Emmanuel Lubezki - Cinematographer, Gil Netter - Producer, Jerry Zucker - Producer, David Zucker - Producer, Robert Fechtman - Set Designer, Denise Pizzini - Set Designer, Syd Dutton - Special Effects, Bill Taylor - Special Effects, Phil Chong - Stunts, Jack Lilley - Stunts, Steve Lambert - Stunts, Mike Johnson - Stunts, Mark Miller - Screenwriter, Robert Mark Kamen - Screenwriter
What if a married man helps an abandoned pregnant woman, and offers her to show up together in front of her father, and then leave in the morning?
Shortly after the surrender of Japan, marking the end of World War II, United States ArmySgt. Paul Sutton returns to San Francisco to reunite with his wife Betty, whom he married — following a whirlwind courtship — the day before he departed for the Pacific. The war has left him with emotional scars, and he experiences flashbacks on a regular basis.
Paul's reunion with Betty is strained, especially after he discovers most of the letters he wrote her were set aside unopened. He is determined to make a go of the marriage however, and hopes to establish a new career for himself. Betty insists he continue to sell candy door-to-door, and he sets off to Sacramento. En route, he meets fellow bus passenger Victoria Aragon, a Stanford Universitygraduate student whose Mexican-American family owns a vineyard in the Napa Valley. When he learns the unmarried woman is pregnant by her professor, Paul offers to introduce himself to her very traditionalist family as her husband.
Victoria's father is infuriated, not only that she married a man below her social standing, but without his permission as well. Paul's initial plan to quietly slip away and continue on his journey, leaving Victoria's family to believe he abandoned her, is derailed when her grandfather Don Pedro encourages him to stay and help with the harvest. During the harvest Paul (an orphan) grows closer to the family and learns the joys that come with their tradition, roots, and way of life. Paul and Victoria try to ignore their growing attraction and feelings for each other, but with little success. However Paul's honor prompts him to attempt to salvage his marriage and return home, but when he does he discovers his wife is involved with another man. She has applied for an annulment, to which he happily agrees, and he returns to the Aragon estate to ask Victoria to marry him.
An argument with her angry, and drunk, father leads to a disastrous fire which destroys the vineyard. However Paul remembers one plant that may still have its roots intact and races off to retrieve them and bring them back to the family. The disaster (as well as Paul's bravery and dedication during the fire) has brought Victoria's father to realize his errors. So when Paul returns he accepts him, telling him that this is "his family" and "his roots". The family sets out to replant and rebuild with the help of their newest member.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "a glorious romantic fantasy, aflame with passion and bittersweet longing. One needs perhaps to have a little of these qualities in one's soul to respond fully to the film, which to a jaundiced eye might look like overworked melodrama, but that to me sang with innocence and trust ... At a time when movies seem obligated to be cynical, when it is easier to snicker than to sigh, what a relief this film is!"[1]
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "A couple of turns of plot — including the histrionic ending — seem less magical than overwrought, but A Walk in the Clouds is for the most part a beautiful, well-acted and emotionally rich picture ... In this very warm-hearted film, Reeves' face is the movie's locus of kindness and decency — and he stands up to scrutiny. There's not just sweetness there but depth."[2]
Hal Hinson of the Washington Post called it "a phenomenally atrocious movie — so bad, in fact, that you might actually manage to squeeze a few laughs out of it ... The film has the syrupy, Kodak magic-moment look of a Bo Derek movie, and pretty much the same level of substance."[3]
Variety described the film as "a glossy, fairy-tale romance that's longer on wishfulness than believability" and "a modest but sharply mounted comedy/melodrama."[4]
