Beyond the Clouds (Italian: Al di là delle nuvole; French: Par-delà les nuages)[1] is a 1995 anthology romance film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders,[1] from a screenplay written by Antonioni, Wenders and Tonino Guerra.

It stars an ensemble cast, featuring John Malkovich, Sophie Marceau, Vincent Perez, Irène Jacob, Jean Reno, Fanny Ardant, Chiara Caselli, Kim Rossi Stuart, Peter Weller, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau.

A co-production between Italian, French and German companies,[1] Beyond the Clouds was based on Antonioni's 1986 book That Bowling Alley on the Tiber.

It was conceived by Wim Wenders as a comeback for the then-retired filmmaker, who had been semi-retired since 1982 (with Identification of a Woman).

Upon landing, he drives through the night through thick fog, with people appearing and disappearing like apparitions.

In Ferrara, Italy, Silvano meets Carmen and asks her where he can find a room for the night.

Silvano walks Carmen to her home, where she reveals that she lived with a man for a year, and only recently he left her.

Some time later, the woman meets her friend at the Caffè Excelsior, but notices the director sitting nearby.

The director follows and they talk about the killing that took place a year prior, for which she spent three months in jail before being acquitted.

Later, the director sits at a pool above the town contemplating the woman's story and its impact on the film he is writing.

On the train the director considers the "limits of our brains, of our experience, of our culture, of our inspiration, of our imagination, of our sensitivity."

In Aix-en-Provence, the director is contemplating the paintings in his hotel lobby when he notices a man entering the building across the street to deliver architectural drawings.

As they walk along the cobblestone streets, the young woman tells Niccolo that she longs to escape her body, that it needs too much and is never satisfied.

Detached and bored, Niccolo walks around like a tourist gazing up at the architecture before sitting down away from the congregation.

The screenplay was adapted from four sketches titled "Story of a Love Affair that Never Existed", "The Girl, The Crime ...", "Don't Try to Find Me", and "This Body of Filth", from Antonioni's book, That Bowling Alley on the Tiber.

The film was completed with help from Wim Wenders, who wrote its prologue and epilogue and worked on the screenplay.

[4] Beyond the Clouds was filmed in the following locations: In the original edited footage (which was more than two hours long) the sex scene between Peter Weller and Chiara Caselli was longer and showed the actor performing an explicit cunnilingus to the actress.

Antonioni, for his part, cut more than half of Wenders' contributions including almost all of the scenes with Marcello Mastroianni.

[6] The film's soundtrack features compositions by Bono and Adam Clayton (of U2), Van Morrison, Laurent Petitgirard, and Lucio Dalla.

The Bono/Clayton songs "Your Blue Room" and "Beach Sequence" were later featured on the album Original Soundtracks 1, credited to the shared pseudonym Passengers.

Beyond the Clouds received mixed to positive reviews with the general consensus being that fans of Antonioni's work would welcome and appreciate this as one of the director's last films; others would be less embracing of his distinctive cinematic style.

In his review in The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "There are moments of such astounding visual power in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Beyond the Clouds that you are all but transported through the screen to a place where the physical and emotional weather fuse into a palpable sadness.

Guthman sees as the dominant theme of the film "the ways in which desire distorts perception and leaves us betrayed when our wishes and reality prove incompatible.

It's that compelling sense of mystery, of the endless search and its undercurrent of loneliness, that sets this great filmmaker apart.