StanfordCollins

When well-intentioned parents coddle their children, the children may have difficulty fending for themselves after leaving the family rose garden. This film depicts the travails of a naive young woman who faces the world alone after her protective bubble bursts. Her story is structured in two parts. In the first the heroine Nanami seamlessly continues her comfortable middle class life after finishing college, but then loses her husband and her job. Uprooted and displaced, in the second part she broadens her social exposure, and for the first time experiences the intense union of passionate love, with a nonconformist woman of great personal integrity who is a law unto herself. Contrasts between part one and part two expose shortcomings of typical middle class child rearing and of passionless relationships, and reveal the potential for self-affirmation through our fundamental need to love.

Nanami speaks for many young adults who are ill-prepared to deal with reality. The film is psychologically insightful, emotionally eloquent, witty, moving, and executed on a high technical level. Acting is wonderful, brava brava Haru Kuroki and Cocco. Renaissance man Shunji Iwai proves himself to be at the pinnacle of auteurs. The connection between the music and Nanami's emotional states is so intimate that the film could be viewed as an interpretation of the music. For example, in part one Mozart's delicate and other-worldly Concerto for Flute and Harp mirrors the blissful innocence of one who is naively out of it. Part two begins with Bach's Air on the G String, solemn, melancholy, like a funeral march infused with tenderness and sympathy. It captures her dire state of helpless bewilderment and our compassion for a despairing soul. This film is in that tradition of Japanese cinema where enlightenment on important humanist issues was accomplished through empathy. There is much to appreciate for viewers who are interested in the existential crisis that can occur during the transition from a conventional middle class upbringing, to a sustainable path toward self-fulfillment as an adult.

It's not easy to do justice to La Vallee in a few sentences. It weaves adventure, anthropology, social criticism, nature, and relationships into a parable of self-revelation. The film focuses on Viviane, one of the beautiful people who know all good things except heart-felt passion. Literally by accident, her fascination with exotic feathers draws her into an expedition with a "family" of Utopian idealists. As they cross New Guinea in search of an isolated valley, Viviane simultaneously experiences a joyful odyssey across her suppressed inner landscapes. Sumptuously filmed events interlaced with moments of self-revelation transform Viviane from a pampered woman of the world to an impassioned child of nature, and beyond. Each character influences her personal quest differently: pragmatic enlightenment (Olivier), universal love (Hermine), visionary fanaticism (Gataen), oneness with nature (native tribe).

Outer and inner realities begin to merge, eventually reflecting and enhancing each other in mystical parallelism. She becomes possessed by a sense of seamless unity between her self and her environment. Feeling herself flow into the world around her is a joyful reward that richly compensates for forfeiting every accoutrement of civilization. Anyone expecting to see them giggling merrily over tropical drinks in a valley of palm trees and friendly monkeys is in for a rude shock. This is an honest film. Our little self-styled cult of postmodern zealots knows the price of following the inner path and they have prepared themselves to pay it fully. We do see their valley though we may not readily recognize it as paradise. The Valley obscured by clouds is the ultimate parallel symbol in this film of symbols: it is the undiscovered depths of ones being, and an enabling realm of detachment totally cut off from self-alienating civilizations. La Vallee marks a path by which one aspires to universal harmony through unfettered spiritual freedom.

Schroeder uses varying combinations of sound and picture as an expressive tool. As the story progresses, he steadily diminishes emphasis on words while increasing the importance of images. Conversations in rather bland settings dominate the first part of the film (excepting some rapt moments under the seductive spell of magic feathers). Gradually, visual elements gain prominence. The final scene is in the style of silent film, with only sparse dialog inserted like a few lines of printed text in a Chaplin movie. Our experience of this shift from word-biased content to image-biased content is also Viviane's experience as she gradually reaches into parts of herself that are beyond words. This structural analogy lets us join her inner transformation through our eyes and ears, thus making the abstract seem real. It also unifies style and substance in a way that contributes handsomely to the film's focus and intensity. Every aspect of this film was created solely by movie professionals. La Vallee is an impressive example of the unique potential of their craft.

Those who would turn to this film mostly to hear Pink Floyd's music should buy the CD instead. Three years later Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here which has a similar theme. If you like Wish You Were Here, you will probably also like La Vallee.