The eighty-three-year-old Antonioni returned to filmmaking after a ten-year absence (triggered by a debilitating stroke that left him unable to speak) with this resolutely idiosyncratic treatise on that most old-fashioned of themes, beauty. Its four separate episodes, set in France and Italy, are based on stories in Antonioni's collection The Bowling Alley on the Tibor: Tales of a Director. Stars such as Irène Jacob, Peter Weller, and Jean Reno all engage in narratives of love, its unattainability and its lure. Framing segments, directed by co-producer Wim Wenders and starring John Malkovich as The Director, link the tales, as does a whimsical ronde reuniting Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. The film was poorly received when it debuted in the mid-nineties, when being “against beauty” was all the rage, but its stunning images and unabashed embrace of eros and emotion now stand ripe for rediscovery. “The work of a great director,” Peter Hogue wrote in Film Comment, “and one of the major films of the decade.”