The Sheltering Sky main backdrop
The Sheltering Sky main poster

The Sheltering Sky

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6.5/10 • 274

1990-10-252h 18m

DramaAdventure

A woman's dangerous and erotic journey...

An American couple drift toward emptiness in postwar North Africa.

Directors
Bernardo Bertolucci
Editors
Gabriella Cristiani

Top Billed Cast

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  1. Debra Winger

    Debra Winger

    Kit

  2. John Malkovich

    John Malkovich

    Port

  3. Campbell Scott

    Campbell Scott

    Tunner

  4. Jill Bennett

    Jill Bennett

    Mrs. Lyle

  5. Timothy Spall

    Timothy Spall

    Eric Lyle

  6. Eric Vu-An

    Eric Vu-An

    Belqassim

  7. Amina Annabi

    Amina Annabi

    Mahrnia

  8. Philippe Morier-Genoud

    Philippe Morier-Genoud

    Captain Broussard

  9. Sotigui Kouyaté

    Sotigui Kouyaté

    Abdelkader

Reviews1

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CinemaSerf Avatar

CinemaSerf

Feb 15, 2025

6/10

When “Kit” (Debra Winger) and her husband “Port” (John Malkovich) realise that their relationship is running out of steam, they decide to head into the Moroccan desert and rejuvenate their lives. Things don’t quite get off to the start he’d want though as he quickly finds himself in an erotic knocking shop complete with noisy chickens whilst befriended by the rather sexually ambiguous and sweaty “Eric” (Timothy Spall) and his frugal mother (Jill Bennett). They have their uses, though, as his wife and their friend “George” (Campbell Scott) have headed into the interior and he wants to pursue. It’s upon this journey that we realise, through some narration, that nobody here has ever been especially honest with the other and that any solution that may emerge here will be, at best, an hybrid of what they wanted/expected or even dreamt. Though both Winger and Malkovich take the lead here, and deliver competently, I found it was actually the supporting cast that worked better at illustrating the toxicity of this scenario. Spall, especially, but also the native tribespeople who take part and who viscerally illustrate the contrast between our two amidst marital turbulence and societies that subsist amidst the arid, fly-infested yet beautiful villages of the northern Sahara. It’s that photography, reminiscent of the Jack Cardiff, that conveys a marvellous combination of the passive, the manic and the serene as the people gradually diminish into a timeless vista that for me, anyway, symbolised the superfluous nature of mankind and the irrelevance of our, largely self-inflicted, problems. As to the conclusion of the story, well I have to say that I didn’t really care one way or the other about these spoiled and rather selfish characters whose melodrama and peccadilloes didn’t really matter in a grander scheme of things. It’s that uninteresting story that dragged this down for me, that and the fact that Bertolucci seemed intent on peppering the film with sex scenes as if to compensate for a broader lack of something more substantial to demonstration any kind of emotional connection between just about any of these characters. It is a great looking film to watch but as a story I found it a little on the shallow side.

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  • The Sheltering Sky poster
  • The Sheltering Sky poster
  • The Sheltering Sky poster
  • The Sheltering Sky poster
  • The Sheltering Sky poster

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Status
Released
Original Language
English
Budget
$25,000,000.00
Revenue
$2,075,084.00
Keywords
adulteryafricasahara desertextramarital affair