Il Deserto Rosso
Ah, I love Antonioni. It doesn’t even really matter what is happening in his movies (although I guess you can interpret a lot into them if you want); nothing really happens after all. All I personally care about his films is how they look like, where “Le Amiche” is the big exception. Sometimes when I feel like blogging about it, I might go into detail about why it felt like I am missing Antonioni’s look in it, but the story itself was marvelous. “Il Deserto Rosso” however, is very similar to “Blow-up” and “L’Eclisse” when it comes to style.
And what style! The use of colors, the empty look of the characters and the cold way they speak coldly with each other when talking about the most personal things – that is all so Antonioni. Since this is his fourth movie I am seeing, I can now say with certainty that I am in love with Antonioni’s cinematography and that “Il Deserto Rosso” is no exception. I could try thinking about how red and blue are used in the film, but ultimately I don’t get it. Is it standing for men and women? For the industry and sex? I don’t know.
Perhaps it comes down to the fact that I think Monica Vitti is extremely hot and no matter which role she plays, she’s just perfect in them. Then again, Blow-up made a huge and positive impression on me without starring Monica Vitti at all. Nevertheless, whenever she does appear, she outshines everybody else around her. She would have been the star if she had appeared in “Le Amiche”, and it’s probably very good that she didn’t.
Somehow the best scene of the whole film was Giuliana’s story. When she tells her son something like that, you immediately know that this story means nothing yet everything in a film, just like in „The Trial“, the parabel towards the end of the book is an allegory for the whole book. Just like for “The Trial”, I don’t quite see its meaning here, especially since this film seems to be a love story, yet the girl’s story doesn’t seem to hint at it at all.
Antonioni’s characters never love except in “Le Amiche”, perhaps that is why I prefer that particular film over all of them. Even in this film, love never seems to be an issue despite the one amusing and the other slightly disgusting sex scene. Nevertheless, I have high hopes for the other two films from his trilogy (“L’Avventura” and “La Notte”), where alienation in love is the main theme after all. Those two, and then there is “Zabriskie Point”, “Professione: Reporter” and “The Passenger”… except for Jim Jarmusch, I fear that I am never going to be able to see all the films of my favorite directors.