The Valley (Obscured By Clouds) Review

• 21st Feb 2011

The Valley (Obscured by Clouds) is released in the UK for the first time. It is the second feature from Barbet Schroeder following on from More (1969) and features a soundtrack by the Pink Floyd adding a touch of the strange. The Valley (Obscured by Clouds) is set in Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific and tells the story of a young and beautiful woman entering a world of hippies, sex, drug taking and, ultimately, madness.

Viviane (Bulle Ogier), a beautiful, bourgeois French woman married to a French ambassador in Australia visits Papua New Guinea in search of some exotic feathers to sell in her shop in Paris. Although taking these feathers is illegal, she meets up with a hippy, Apollo (Michael Gothard) who tells her where she is able to get hold of them. She takes a chance and goes to his commune on the island where she soon makes love to him. She is introduced to Gaetan (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) and two other women and a child in the commune. When she decides to travel to a mysterious unexplored valley up in the mountains she ventures on a perilous journey that she may never return from in many ways.

The Valley is, for the most part, about the sublimity of nature. In that sense it has been superseded by other films dealing with the way that nature takes over the mind including Peter Weir’s The Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Werner Herzog’s movies, in particular the superior Aguirre, Wrath of God also made in 1972. Both The Valley and Aguirre, Wrath of God have their origins in Joseph Conrad’s 1900 novel, Heart of Darkness about a journeyman travelling down a river in the Congo. The further he ventures, the more insane he becomes (this novel was made as, Apocalypse Now in 1979). Schroeder’s original intention was to film the story on a boat, but it was decided (at Bulle Ogier’s suggestion) to set it in a jungle after seeing maps of undiscovered mountains with the only type across them reading ‘obscured by clouds’.

The film opens with Pink Floyd’s chillingly mysterious soundtrack with the valley appearing in the mist. From here the film never successfully lives up to the opening shots. There are a handful of moments of weirdness, such as, when a drugged up Ogier connects with nature and finds womb like comfort amongst the roots of a giant tree. Schroeder deliberately avoids drama and any drama included in the film found itself on the cutting room floor.  Before the finale there is a lengthy scene in which the travellers try to blend in with the Mapuga tribes-people’s ceremony. The result makes the film a little too National Geographic. As a result, the hippy ideology and message of the film is contrary. The hippies seem to be approving or dismissing Viviane’s exploitation of a lost world. Schroeder criticises the hippy culture which makes more sense with the protagonist dying at the end.

Included on the DVD are three short documentary films made by Schroeder about the tribes in Papua New Guinea as well as trailers for More and Maitrese (Mistress) made in 1976.

Chris Hick