Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Year Released: 1960
Rating: 3.0
Demands every little sliver of attention you may have in your entire being; like all of Antonioni's pictures, you either like it or you don't, and if you don't, you'll probably hate it. I found it much more palatable than La Notte and Red Desert, which reek of pretentiousness - at least with L'Avventura, you can deduce that there are serious moral issues being dealt with (albeit abstractly). "Descriptions" don't really do the picture justice; it's detached, intensely cerebral and maddeningly cryptic - woman disappears on island, boyfriend and his girl-on-the-side (Monica Vitti) set out to find her; gradually, her disappearance becomes borderline irrelevant to the both of them, who are coming to terms with their relationship, and his philandering. It would be easy to dismiss it by rehashing my typical complaints about dense foreign films (it's too long, too detached, too slow, etc.), but its "ideas" sunk in, and after enough examination, I feel there's genuine artistry and poetry in it to warrant a hearty recommendation. To fully "grasp" Antonioni's existentialism (if that's what you can call it) and style, it requires a good number of viewings. Good luck.
