La Vallée
Barbet Schroeder (1972)
The audience is meant to be immersed in a new, sensuous world but a Pink Floyd score and several nude scenes aren’t enough to achieve this. The state of entrancement keeps getting interrupted: you stub your ear against a regular supply of banal ‘meaningful’ dialogue. A group of French explorers searches for a legendary, hidden valley in the New Guinea bush. Viviane, the wife of the French consul in Melbourne, joins them – she’s looking for the feathers of a rare bird of the region. On their journey, the group encounter members of the Mapuga, an isolated tribe. The Europeans, as might be expected, start questioning their own values. Néstor Almendros’s out-of-this-world photography is undermined by mundane characters. As Viviane, Bulle Ogier has a stubbornly materialistic quality that holds attention because it’s increasingly incongruous in the setting. The drippy actors playing her companions fit in better.
[1976]
