A WALK IN THE CLOUDS
[Spoilers]
A film review by David Katz
Copyright 1995 David Katz
Paul [Keanu] ships home after the war. On the gangplank he admits to a fellow soldier that he doesn't know what his wife looks like because he met and married her just before shipping out.
Fortunately, his memory is soon refreshed when he gets home and finds her practicing remedial speech for the sophisticated while sitting around in her undies.
It turns out that she never read most of letters that he wrote to her so she doesn't know that he doesn't want to sell chocolates any more, so the next morning he leaves to sell chocolates.
On the train to his chocolate-selling territory, he meets Victoria [Aitana] who barfs on him and then accidentally swaps train tickets with him. But, as luck would have it, when he gets on the bus because he was kicked off the train because he had the wrong ticket, there she is so she can apologize, which she obviously forgot to do earlier, but they are distracted by the two guys that get on the bus and try to hassle her until Paul [Keanu] says "The lady isn't interested" or something like that and then he has to punch them out so they get kicked off the bus. Of course, being the understanding, polite and caring sorts, they don't decide to pound the .... out of him, which is good because that way he can walk down the road and find Victoria [Aitana] sitting on her suitcase crying.
It turns out that she is knocked up and since her Dad said that he would kill anyone who disgraced the family, she figured that she better go home. Since Paul [Keanu] doesn't want her killed, maybe because she is the only woman who ever barfed on him, he agrees to pretend that they're married to keep her father off her back and he seals the deal with a couple of tin foil bands from around some of the chocolates in his sampler case.
Now her dad can't kill her if he finds out she's pregnant but he's real pissed that she married a Gringo because his family came from Mexico to start this vineyard.
The plan is that Paul [Keanu] will sneak out in the middle of the night and leave a note saying he couldn't take it and then she can be single and pregnant and legitimate. The family fight at the dinner plays into their hands well for the leaving part, except that frost comes and everyone has to save the grapes in the vineyard by running around smokepots flapping silk wings.
Too bad for Paul [you guessed!!!], just as he is sneaking out the grandfather Dom Pedro [Anthony Quinn] catches up to him and convinces him not to leave until after the harvest so that the Dad won't be really P.O.'ed and hassle Victoria for the rest of her life. They go for a walk and Dom Pedro eats all of the sample chocolates and nearly recognized the tinfoil band as Victoria's wedding ring. They go up to the shrine where the original vine that Dom Pedro brought from his father's vineyard in Mexico is still growing.
So Paul stays and helps with the harvest. Just before they start picking Pedro Jr. shows up and hugs everyone and, as it later turns out, its a good thing he is only 5'2" and weighs maybe 105 pounds with his glasses on. Paul gets into a grape plucking contest with the Dad and then the married women stomp some grapes and since everyone thinks that Victoria is married, she goes ahead and stomps grapes which allows her to do this great seductress scene until the other guys throw Paul in too. Fortunately, they take off his army boots and socks before he actually steps in the grapes.
Now Paul and Victoria get all covered with grape juice which obviously makes them horny because the next scene they're in the bedroom getting kind of serious, only just at the last moment Paul decides he can't because he's a married man and so he goes to leave again and Dom Pedro catches him again and this time they drink a bunch of brandy and sing and get drunk. Dom Pedro convinces Paul to go and serenade Victoria only she doesn't come to the window until its too late so Paul really leaves this time, only to run into her the next day at the wine celebration where the priest drinks some of the Dad's wine, which seems to have fermented, cleared, and been bottles and labeled in just 24 hours and he says its good. The Dad introduces Paul to the priest and the priest says the he wanted to marry Victoria (in the church!!!) and so the Dad announces that they will get married again that evening.
Victoria can't take the tension any more and tells her father they weren't married and a big argument happens where Paul tells the Dad that he really doesn't consider himself married to his first wife.
The Dad goes and gets drunk under the trees at the edge of the vineyard while Paul goes home and finds his wife in bed, bonking the guy who made the speech lesson recordings she was listening to at the start and Paul doesn't hit him so she gives Paul the annulment papers that happen to be on the kitchen table.
Paul rushes back to the vineyard to wake up the Dad who is still drunk at the table under the trees and they have a fight where the Dad throws an oil lamp into the grape vines and they start on fire. This is where its good that Pedro Jr. is so small because when his pajamas catch on fire while he is fighting the blaze, Paul [Keanu] can teach him how to Stop, Drop and Roll and then carry him out of the burning fields. Meanwhile, the fire spreads along the espaliered vines fast enough to make Mario Andretti envious. Since they didn't have any service roads to truck the grapes out of the fields, the whole world, from horizon to horizon is on fire in just moments.
The next morning, after they have all finger-painted themselves with wet ashes and the entire vineyard is destroyed, Paul goes up to the shrine and, after some Herculean tugging, pulls up the original vine and takes it back down the mountain. Rather than smack Paul for consecrating the shrine or killing the only living root by tearing it out of the soil, the Dad cuts off a chuck and decides that it will still grow so they start all over.
The credits roll, the lights go up, and we see someone who looks vaguely like Roger Ebert sleeping in the sixth row. Somewhere a props person is returning the surrealistic scenery paintings to archives.
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