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L'Avventura - Criterion CollectionRating:
Release Date: 05 June, 2001 Retail Price: $39.95 OUR Price: $35.99 You SAVE: $3.96! Cast: Complete Cast (5 total) |
L'Avventura - Criterion Collection Reviews
Slow, but wonderful; beautiful print
With Antonioni's The Passenger having recently been re-released on DVD, and just having bought a new player and LCD screen, I've gotten on an Antonioni binge, and let me say, first of all, that this print is spectacular. It is a beautiful remastering job, and I've got to say that this alone made the experience of this picture very different from when I saw it in college years ago. The images are just gorgeous.
As with the much later film, The Passenger, the guts of this film are not in the plot. The plot (which is well-described in other reviews) is, frankly, presented in a slow, ambling, and sometimes almost aimless manner. As with The Passenger, the narrative thread is often enough not clear, and more questions are raised than answered.
But, at least for this viewer, that causes the focus of attention to turn more to the visual content of the film, and the rhythm. In that way, it weaves it's magic. And a print of this quality really helps make that happen. Sure, I agree with those that find the ending unsatisfying. But so can be the real world. And with a willing immersion in Antonioni's visual language, we have the opportunity to see another way to view the world, and, perhaps strangely (in the midst of all of this talk of alienation and emptiness), that way can be very beautiful, indeed. Strongly recommended, but give it some patience.
Slow, sad, too-long and most of all: unresolved......
This review is for the 2001 Criterion Collection DVD.
I typically enjoy Italian cinema, mainly for its vitality and zest for life. Unfortunately, this film had very little of that. The movie starts off strong with a fascinating boat trip among some intriguing islands in the Mediterranean Sea with the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful young woman. The plot then meanders into a slow paced melodrama between the boyfriend of the missing girl and the missing girl's best female friend. This relationship is destined for doom for a number of reasons and neither are sympathetic characters. But worst of all, the central mystery of the story is never resolved, especially for a movie this long (approximately 2 hrs. 20 minutes). Why people hype this as a great film is beyond me. I can only be grateful that I rented this DVD and didn't buy it.
Movie: D+
DVD Quality: A
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