This Bernardo Bertolucci drama sends an American couple deep into the Sahara desert, where they discover the transporting power of landscape and culture and learn the distinction between being a tourist and a traveler. Kit (Debra Winger) and Porter (John Malkovich) put themselves in unknown territory in an attempt to inject passion into their 10-year marriage. Bertolucci’s cinematic preoccupations with travel and sexual pluralism converge in this rich and haunting film, which brings to life the intimate details of longing and loneliness. Based on the novel by Paul Bowles.

"I finally read the book on one of my trips to China. At once I thought: 'This is a movie!' I was fascinated by the idea of these 'figures in a landscape,' so like the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. At the same time, I had the feeling that the story of Port and Kit would give me the possibility of exploring the anatomy ​of the characters even more than their psychology. ​I suppose that my secret ambition was to shoot a kind of endoscopic film, using a fiber optic lens! One of our concerns while writing the screenplay was that of filtering the literary values of the book. The goal was to arrive at some sort of 'physiology of feelings,' substituting the inner voices with the physical presence of Kit and Port. From the start, we wondered how much of Paul [Bowles] and Jane's story had found its way into the book. Then I had the idea of building our characters by 'drawing from life'—from the original models." —Bernardo Bertolucci