A Walk in the Clouds

A Walk in the Clouds is Alfonso Arau's first film as a director after the worldwide success "Like Water for Chocolate", a beautiful magic-realist film. A Walk in the Clouds is also Arau's first Hollywood film. Judging from the film, Arau's meeting with the Hollywood film industry is an unhappy one.

This romantic drama is excessively melodramatic, sentimental and simplistic. It has none of the charm of "Like Water for Chocolate"; in fact it is hollow in comparison.

Keanu Reeves plays Paul Sutton, a war hero in WW2, who meets Victoria, a Mexican girl, on a business trip. She confides to Paul that she is pregnant and that she fears her father will kill her when she returns home without a husband. Paul, who is already married, offers to act the part of husband for a day or so. He follows her to her parents' wineyard where he finds a world completely different from the one he knows. Soon Paul's and Victoria's plan crumbles.