The Sheltering Sky, the second work in the trilogy dedicated to a world radically alien to ours, begins in an overtly epic way. The protagonists leave the ship and the sea behind them but, unlike Odysseus, they do not always think about returning. Their home, which we glimpse during the opening credits, is only a sepia-toned urban graphic; in front of the sky and the vast North African horizons, New York resembles a memory, a dead place. In the film, based on a good novel by Bowles, the literary matrix replaces the pictorial one or, better, integrates it since the text to which the film refers is strongly visual. The narrator, Bowles himself in the syncretic role of Fate and Father Time (and therefore, by extension, of cinema) or rather of the one who knows everything in advance, presents himself as a composed and detached, Homeric prophet, the faithful mirror of that rarefied elegance that characterizes the protagonists. The words and face of the dandy Bowles correspond to the dandyism of Port and George while the real hero is the woman. The initial transgression of Port Moresby (John Malkovich), who enters the African night by secluding himself with the prostitute Mahrnia, beautiful "more than the moon", is part of the search for the mother, of the psycho-geographical journey undertaken by all of Bertolucci's male characters. Mahrnia, who resembles one of the odalisques painted by Ingres, welcomes the American on her ample breasts: it is the exotic Orient of white travellers, an unknown and seductive land although a stepmother. In fact, the girl tries to rob the customer who, having recovered his wallet, runs away alone into the darkness, prefiguring his own death. The dense network of quotations - the plot that the director usually weaves around the characters and the audience - gives rhythm and depth to the story. Husband and wife walk together under the protecting sky: he dies searching in vain for his other self outlined on the reflecting surface, she – much closer to the secret and the treasure – gets lost to finally recognize herself in the dominant effigy of the mother-moon. As we see in the film there is much more than it seems, it is not a love story nor a glossy vacation for spectators-tourists of the exotic screen. The refined set by Gianni Silvestri, the beautiful costumes by Acheson, the fatal gusts of the musical score composed by Sakamoto enchant, certainly, but this aestheticizing curtain does not hide but rather amplifies and illustrates the true intentions of the author, the project that Bertolucci has never abandoned, that is, the search for a mystery embroidered in cipher on the canvas of human events, therefore traceable at the exact point in which appearance becomes essence, naked counterpart of solitude.
