Tuesday, January 19, 2010

L'Avventura (1960), Dir: Michaelangelo Antonioni


“How can it be that it takes so little to change, to forget.” – Claudia

While out on a day trip, a member of a boating party mysteriously disappears. Brought together by the search for her, the missing woman’s boyfriend and best friend become lovers.

L’avventura is an elegant and stark film, with superb camera work and costuming. Because I could not help myself before I started to view this film, I glanced at the Netflix reviews and saw so much “sterility,” “pretty but . . .” “I know that this is supposed to be good for you, but . . .” that I very nearly didn’t watch the film. I was afraid that I would find Antonioni too much like Goddard, a director who interests me at times but rarely impacts me on an emotional level. And I can appreciate how L’avventura could have gone that way, too. It is, after all, a depiction of emotional sterility, all the actors arrested at a moment right before they might actually concern themselves with the woman’s disappearance (and some, likely, so vapid and shallow as to never have been close to caring about the disappearance as something other than a slight deviation from scheduled gaiety). But I found myself moved by the distancing Sandro and Claudia attempted (beautifully reinforced cinematically) so much so that I ached for the two at the end and their uneasy release.

Rating: 9/10

Genre: Foreign/Drama

Length: 143 min.

The trailer:


And because it was impossible to narrow these down to a few gorgeous shots:





















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