L'Avventura (1960) - Michelangelo Antonioni

L'Avventura is a film with a reputation.  Upon its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960, it was booed by the audience but was selected for the Jury Prize after its second showing.  (Apparently the Jury Prize is the third most prestigious prize at Cannes.)  That sort of "only critics understand this" credibility makes it the quintessential pretentious-high brow-foreign film that everybody thinks you should see.  I don't mean to sound like a film snob, but really, everyone should see this film.

Antonioni’s characters live in a world of extreme wealth which allows them the luxury of ultimate leisure because inherently, leisure is what separates the rich.  Without the burdens of a job or financial obligations, the film’s central figures live an MTV lifestyle complete with self-created problems.  With a name like L'Avventura, it is only fitting that the story is a melodramatic tale about incredibly shallow people all searching for their own adventure.

Anna is the spoiled daughter of an Italian diplomat who disapproves of her relationship with Sandro, a wealthy playboy.  Despite her obvious beauty and privileged lifestyle, Anna is shown as a character who is constantly looking for something or wanting to prove something.  In the film's opening scene, Anna’s father simply tells her “that boy will never marry you”, referring to Sandro. Immediately after their conversation, Anna reunites with Sandro and seduces him while her best friend Claudia waits in the street.  Later, Anna is distraught and frightened when she sees a shark while swimming.  “I could have died!” she exclaims.  She later confesses to Claudia that she made up the shark.  The shark scare served as the fix for an argument between her and Sandro with him coming to her rescue in the ocean.  It’s obvious that Anna is a perpetual liar who spins tales for attention-so much so that when she goes missing, Sandro blankly states that she is probably hiding from the group to get attention.  As the group searches for Anna, I asked Justin what he thinks happened to her. “I don’t think she died but if she did, she probably died trying to hide from them for attention.”  Sounds about right.

Early in the film, Anna’s best friend Claudia doesn’t seem too impressed with Sandro but a few stolen
glances during the search for her friend and she’s putty in his hands.  Sandro makes his intentions clear about 18 hours after Anna’s disappearance.  As Claudia finds herself increasingly attracted to Sandro, she breaks down out of guilt and it appears that she is suffering a moral dilemma.  This lasts approximately 6 minutes.  Antonioni paints Claudia as a young woman who desperately wants to have this sordid love affair that in her mind, is an adventure that will make her oh so interesting and mysterious.  You know that girl who would have an affair with a married man just to have a story to tell?  Claudia is that girl.  After her initial hesitations, she dives head first into a relationship that she can’t possibly believe will last and it is one that turns her into an insecure young woman who is desperate for Sandro’s love.  She constantly asks Sandro for affirmation that he loves her and it’s plain to see that deep down, she has reservations about Sandro’s sudden discovery of his feelings for her.

Sandro is Anna’s wealthy playboy lover and the archetype of an Italian lothario.  He thinks that he is a passionate man but really, he’s a guy that wants to sleep with all the beautiful women.  Within about a week of meeting Claudia and a few days after his girlfriend’s disappearance, Sandro tells Claudia that he loves her and casually suggests that the two get married.  This is outrageous.  Anna wanted nothing more than for Sandro to marry her but even as he brushed her off, it seemed unlikely that she would ever leave him.  In the scene before her disappearance, Anna cryptically tells Sandro that if he doesn’t want to marry her, then she wants to be alone but he quickly dismisses her implying that he doesn’t actually believe her.  Only when Claudia resists his advances  and questions his love, Sandro abruptly suggests marriage.  He doesn’t ask her to marry him, he simply suggests it and then quickly brushes the idea aside when she points out how crazy it is.

If one thing is clear in this film, it's that none of these characters are in love.  In one of the most memorable scenes, Claudia asks Sandro to tell her he loves her. "I love you," he says with a small smile. "Tell me you don't love me," she tests him.  "I don't love you." Sandro says simply before leaving the bedroom.  He quickly comes back. "That was a lie, I love you."  It seems sweet but Sandro's actions after the scene tell a different story.  The trio are completely devoid of true emotion so it seems ironic that Antionioni's characters find themselves in the most dramatic circumstances and saying the most heartfelt things that can't possibly be true.  To them, love is the ultimate adventure but they are indiscriminate of the “adventure” they choose.  Simply put, they are all unhappily “in love” because they are scared to be alone.

L'Avventura is a remarkable film in that it is the predecessor to the modern soap opera.  Its themes are too familiar in today's culture as the characters feel like they would be right at home on Gossip Girl.  In one way or another, every character is going through their own existential crisis but they never allow themselves to fully explore the emptiness they all feel.  Instead, Anna and her peers fill their fears with disingenuous relationships that they choose to believe is true love.  Nevertheless, Antonioni's work is not merely a scathing commentary of the vapid  and superficial upper class, but an outstanding examination of the fear we all have of being alone and its consequences.