With Liza Rinzler's cinematography in the style of Wenders's '70s favorite, Robby Mueller, Lisbon Story starts as a thrilling montage of slices of highways, changes of skies, and shifts in weather, complemented by sound bites off the car radio of country-to-country music. Paris is the best: a one-second glimpse of the Eiffel Tower way at the end of a bicycle-lane-sized city street.

Then Winter drives into Portugal, his auto gets a flat tire, and Lisbon Story flattens out too, like a cold pancake. Winter has come to Portugal to reunite with filmmaker Friedrich Monroe, who has mysteriously run off. For a listless hour of Lisbon Story, Winter waits, picking up sounds in the city with his tape recorder, interacting with the neighborhood children. Never has actor Vogler been so annoyingly passive. The kids, talking incomprehensible pigeon English, are singularly uncharming.

More time is squandered with musical numbers by Madredeus, a just-okay Portuguese pop group. Then there's the ageless Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal's greatest filmmaker, who does a guest turn with a pompous philosophical monologue. Finally, Monroe (Patrick Bauchau) turns up, and it seems he's having an artistic crisis, unable to make films anymore. But Winter is there for an angel's pep talk: "Move your ass, finish your movie, with a little help from your friends."