• Sadly it’s Antonioni’s last film before his stroke—and although it’s not amongst his best works there’s a lot here
  • Apparently Vincent Camby from the Times killed it so much so that it didn’t get a release here
  • DP is Carlo Di Palma (Red Desert, Blow-Up)– very good work
  • Ambiguities
  • Chic parties like La Dolce Vita– but it’s about a director with writer’s block like 8 ½
  • In the worst spots it gets very dialogue–y- lots of bemoaning
  • The best sequences (fog set piece sequence is a standout)
  • focus more on the paranoia—people leering, jealously, fidelity—these are the same obsessions Antonioni has had for 30+ years- using architecture (god the fog is good) as character and metaphor
  • Rarely does your pulse get going in a Antonini film but there’s a sequence when he speeds up the car and she’s horrified
  • There’s his summer house that is beautiful and it’s literally sinking into the ground “void”- another metaphor— we also end in Venice with the sea
  • Very sexualized
  • Neons in the mise-en-scene
  • Again the character drops- L’Avventura– she disappears and he picks up with the others but this is not like Persona or Bunuel’s (or Lynch for that matter) with the dueling women and identity
  • Paced
  • Great shot of her looking out of the door and he’s in the window frame
  • Some of the dialogue is trying—“it’s the water that’s so sad” and “I feel so impotent”
  • I adore the sci-fi ominous ending bringing back the colors that have been formally so well set up—the sound is like from Vangelis (it is not thought probably inspired by- Chariots is 1981 and Blade Runner is 82’)- it’s great— but I hate the execution with the tin foil- it’s a bit embarrassing
  • R/HR border leaning HR with another watch