Based on the novel by Paul Bowles, Bertolucci’s film chronicles the gradual deterioration of an American couple’s marriage as they journey through the deserts of North Africa in the late 1940s. Beautifully photographed by Vittorio Storaro, this expansive, handsome film is a rich and exotic amalgam of psychopathology and eroticism—a moving portrait of an overwhelmingly isolated world where love is subverted by disease and madness. Malkovich delivers a complex performance as Port Moresby, the self-absorbed, manipulative husband who is paralyzed by his malaise.