Interlocked and overlapping stories, joined together through the roamings of a ruminative film director: "I only discovered reality when I began photographing it." (The actor in the part, John Malkovich, can make a hello sound like a difficult thought.) A tensionless collaboration between two compatible Gloomy Gusses, the infirm eighty-something Michelangelo Antonioni and, credited with directing only the prologue, entr'actes, and epilogue, Wim Wenders. The movie is chock-full of high-flown nuttiness: a drainage-pump technician who flatters himself that he still appreciates sunsets, a lost taste; a big sex scene, to a dreamy New Age piano, of "caressing" a woman over her entire body without ever quite touching it (she enjoys herself until she hears the door click). And dialogue like: "Nobody talks anymore." "Eyes are in fashion." Or again: "What if I fell in love with you?" "You'd be lighting a candle in a room full of light." It escalates almost to a point of parody of art-house fare. But those who retain an interest in Antonioni (or to a lesser extent, Wenders) will want to brave it anyhow. With Sophie Marceau, Irene Jacob, Fanny Ardant, Jean Reno, Peter Weller, Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd