Have you ever had one of those nights where you couldn't sleep? You wake up tired, but you know you have to go to work the next day. Everything you do makes you tired, but you must press on. That's the feeling I got from this film. Fatigue. As Winger and Malkovich make their respective ways through the Saharan obstacle course, I wonder what horror is around the next corner. Ultimately, we need to ask the question, "Why are they there." The ennui they represent is hard to fathom. They have bought into this mess and have no intention of leaving it. The characters are exhausting in that they are reckless. They put themselves in constant danger. I guess it's to experience something that will bring them out of their self imposed comas. The acting is excellent; the scenery phenomenal. I felt like I was riding along with them on those awful buses. At some point, I guess, Debra Winger's character has some sort of epiphany and sexual fulfillment, but what lies ahead. Exhausting!

The movie, I gather, is supposed to be about the eroding marriage of Kit (Winger) and Port Moresby (Malkovitch). Port Moresby? The writer of the novel, Paul Bowles, surely meant it as a joke but although I get the joke I didn't get the point.

In fact, the point of the entire film was pretty much lost on me. Winger and Malkovitch arrive to do some touring in North Africa. Come wiz me to zah Casbar. And tell us where Rick's Cafe is located. Right. There is a hanger-on whom they've met on their journey, Scott Campbell. The trio do their best to make themselves at home in the strange city full of strange streets. They stay in a crummy hotel. They wander about and drink tea. No booze in Islamic countries, though my informants asseverate that there is usually some dynamite hash to be had.

But if the point of the story is that Kit and Port feel their marriage dissolving, and that they're searching for something that will restore meaning to their bond, there's not much evidence of it. Yes, Port sleeps with a seductive and treacherous hooker. And Winger and Scott spend the night together after a debauch. But there's nothing to indicate that these were more than errant acts based on impulse, nothing resembling a recurring pattern. Kit and Port don't fight; they hardly argue. They may not be especially bright but they're not soulless either.

They leave the city and travel to a smaller and shabbier tourist town. They manage to dump Scott somewhere. Then they board an overcrowded third-world bus and wind up with Port dying of some unidentified disease, a victim of the epidemic that has caused the closing of the only respectable hotel in town.

She leaves his body on the floor mattress and wanders off into the desert's fringe, where she is offered a ride by some spooky looking nomads, who turn out to be reasonably human after all. They take her to a village compound made up of some unworldly looking multi-story adobe structures. Winger stays with the young head honcho for a while, getting to know him in a Biblical sense, until the other ladies begin to resent her presence and throw her out. She winds up at a Western outpost, tattooed but saved.

Bowles, the author, makes small appearances at the beginning and the end of Winger's journey, voicing some pieces of narrative from the novel, which I didn't find enlightening. Somerset Maugham used to do it better.

Bonus points for the photography. Bernardo Bertolucci may have let the story get away from him but he's got the desert and its denizens down pat. Some of the shots are extremely impressive, the ones that don't look like Bakersfield or Deming. Timbuktu, I was surprised to learn, is a small but flourishing city rather than a caravansary, no longer just Timbuk One. Another joke the point of which eludes me. If Terence Malick had been behind the camera there would have been inserts of the fauna, little lizards skittering around or a sawscale viper or something. Decent performances too.

The first time I saw this I was swept up in the tale because I was curious about seeing where it would go, and then found myself engaged with the characters. It doesn't hold up as well on a second viewing. The mystery, what there was of it, is over.

Two post-WWII Manhattan sophisticates who travel to avoid standing still embark on a soul-searching expedition into the Sahara Desert, where the beautiful but desolate landscapes provide a mirror to their own troubled relationship. The film is nothing if not exotic, presenting some of the purest visions of the desert since Peter O'Toole first rode a camel in 'Lawrence of Arabia'. But the scenario works best when presented as an ethnic travelogue, ushering viewers into an utterly foreign world. The messy marital plot conflicts are, by comparison, all rather vague, especially after Debra Winger goes native in a Bedouin harem. The story never really finds an ending, because there isn't anything to resolve: the characters all exist in a (handsomely photographed) vacuum, and their motivations are even more mysterious than the Arab culture surrounding them. The intrusive (and, as usual, unnecessary) voice-over narration is by novelist Paul Bowles himself, briefly glimpsed in the film's opening scenes.