Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

philosopherjack Identification of a Woman is hardly one of Antonioni's most galvanized or necessary works - it often seems mired in bewilderment (or in figurative - and in a couple of its most striking scenes literal - fog). It seems all too obvious that the protagonist, Niccolo, would be a director uncertain about his next project - at one point saying he's no further along than knowing it will be about a woman, and later on seeming bogged down merely in searching for striking faces. But uncertainty isn't the same as resignation, let alone surrender, and the film has a constant sense of reaching for something potentially transformative, and of welcoming the accompanying frustrations. In the first section, Niccolo's relationship with the aristocratic Mavi exposes him to threats from unknown presumed competitors, to a social group he's uncomfortable with, and ultimately to her unexplained disappearance; the sex scenes between them often carry a sense of wanting to conquer the surrounding space, or to break through it. In the second section, he meets an actress, Ida, who embodies quieter and more intimate mysteries. Antonioni shows us little of the development of either relationship, and the film has a constant sense of roads not taken or threats narrowly avoided - long looks exchanged with other women, warnings of pending violence - or of understandings from which Niccolo is excluded: he certainly seems here like the most passive of filmmakers. In the end, the film suggests his artistic (and perhaps personal) redemption must lie in transcending earthly mysteries, to move into science fiction, where the investigations are celestial; describing the project in his closing voice-over, his imagination for the first time seems free and his wonderment unjaded. The film certainly feels strained at times, and never approaches the glories of L'Avventura or The Passenger; its strange poignancy lies in the sense that Antonioni no longer thought himself capable (or worthy?) of aiming for them.

jblacktree Negative reviews or remarks about this masterwork should be ignored. If you follow the director's career from his first films forward, this investigation places among his greatest works. His concerns, (with the impossibility of a personal identity, with a default identity in/as landscape, cityscapes, with ravishing interiors and an exterior world that is terrifyingly beautiful, fraught with allure and menace in equal parts), are fully realized here. There are no "howlers," the dialog is never precious nor pompous nor pretentious, and when heard in Italian, is, like every element of Antonioni's works, determined, controlled, but completely natural, credible. No movie ever made has been less "misogynistic," and the fictional director in the film and the director of the film speak with such candor it's exhilarating. A must-see.

DICK STEEL As introduced by Lorenzo Codelli, Identification of a Woman was presented in the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 and received a special anniversary award. It's like a personal movie because the lead character Niccolo (Tomas Milian) is a film director, and tells of a personal crisis of the filmmaker. Niccolo was played by a leading Italian actor of the time, Tomas Milian, who was famous for his roles in Italian spaghetti westerns, and was an action star. This was essential the last feature film made by Michelangelo Antonioni before his stroke, before which he spent most of the 80s publishing short stories and exhibiting his abstract paintings.And personally, my bad track record with Antonioni's post L'Eclisse movies unfortunately continues. I'm pretty sure I'm missing something very obvious (or could be it so subtle it eludes me?) that I'm finding each of them quite difficult to sit through (save for perhaps The Passenger), and to try and see its underlying meaning. Perhaps I am just scratching the surface and in doing so, fail to appreciate what the movie's about and for.Or maybe Identification of a Woman is indeed the weaker of the lot, because of certain resemblance to plot design with his earlier masterpieces? For starters there seemed to be some repetitive themes revisited, but that I'm fine with because it made it easier to click with and connect. Just like how Niccolo and his squeeze Mavi (Daniela Silverio) spend considerable time at an emotionally empty high society party reminiscent of that in L'Notte, where they nurse issues from the heart, as well as for one to come to terms with the other's secret admirer.Surely the sex is good, and the movie wastes absolutely no time in getting beneath the sheets for some surprisingly erotic time of a horizontal tango complete with underarm forests, but naturally physical love doesn't compensate for emotional depth absent between the lovers, highlighting something inherent wrong in their relationship. Having anonymous threats made to Niccola also didn't help, as he experienced first hand how these threats got carried out to hurt those he loved. We spend a bit of time with their attempts to escape from a stalker, and even had a technically brilliant sequence involving a deep mist that I thought contemporary movies like Frank Darabont's The Mist, or the video game movie adaptation of Shallow Hill, had taken a huge leaf from.For Niccolo's inability to declare his love and address their conflicts, we get a dose of L'Avventura here. Mavi disappears, and we don't really get to see much of her thereafter. Niccolo tries to launch a search, and we get into the second half of the movie where we see his new relationship with a young actress Ida (Christine Boisson). But of course there are issues to grapple with here, and I thought was something I'd understand as well, and that's the continued holding out of the candle for someone else, together with the notion of love versus need, and serving as an emotional crutch. It's not fair of course, but there's more challenges ahead for Niccola in his relationship with Ida to accept, but by the time we get to it, I'd more or less didn't really care for Niccola anymore.Which probably contrasted to a statement which Lorenzo Codelli shared about what Antonioni said regarding this movie being about its characters. I thought his earlier movies had stronger and more interesting characters, or at least those who can hook my attention down and allowed me to care for them a bit, versus those in this movie. Then again, I suspect I may be on a different wavelength since I enjoyed most of Antonioni's earliest works in the 50s, as compared to the more contemporary ones shown this week so far.

Mark Hudson Possibly the most atmospheric film I ever seen, it made a huge impact when I first saw it, and that opinion has never changed. If there is one film that conveys the mystery of life this is it. It is also a highly evocative picture of Italy from the perspective of the upper middle classes in the late Seventies. Crying out for a DVD release as the photography was excellent too on the original film showings.