Product Description

TRIBUTE TO ANTONIONI SERIES Mr Bongo Films presents another masterpiece from it s tribute series to Antonioni. Identification of a Woman follows on from Story of a Love Affair which is released end of 2007. Antonioni won 35th Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Films Festival in 1982, and was nominated for a Golden Palm. Antonioni is the renowned Academy Award Nominee director of BLOW UP and L AVVENTURA. As well as Winner of the 1951 Silver Ribbon at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists. Antonioni s films are considered some of the most influential in film aesthetics. This film is the quintessential recapitulation of the Antonioni look, of the Antonioni style, and the existential isolation of Antonioni characters, wandering aimlessly in a search for connection. This beautiful and atmospheric film plays up to ANTONIONI s key themes that run through his work lack of communication, the mystery-as a journey-of-self-discovery links the film with the director s earlier BLOW UP (1966) and THE PASSENGER (1975). Carlo Di Palma s cinematography at the Venice locations is superb. Visually, as the camera moves through blue rooms inhabited by bored aristocrats, through the fog on a highway, and along the lagoons of Venice, the aesthetic is beautifully Italian, but the emotional attitude is coolly French. The movie director Niccolo has just been left by his wife. Subsequently he embarks on an obsessive relationship with a young woman who eventually leaves him and disappears (shades also of L AVVENTURA [1960]); while searching for her, he meets a variety of other willing girls (among them Antonioni s own future wife Enrica Fico). This gives him the idea of making a movie about womens relationships. He starts to search for a woman who can play the leading part in the movie.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7224 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-06-30
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Formats: Dolby, PAL, Widescreen
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 125 minutes

Synopsis
A divorced, middle-aged filmmaker (Milian) searching for a leading lady to star in his next feature comes to realise that he has been subconsciously utilizing this task to instead find a new lover. Being a little over ambitious, he manages to become romantically involved with two women. After an initial attempt at juggling the relationships, the filmmaker is left alienated and confused when one of the women mysteriously disappears and the other becomes pregnant with another man's child. An atmospheric, erotic love story from acclaimed Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni (ZABRISKIE POINT, RED DESERT, BLOW-UP).

Customer Reviews

Intriguing and beautiful late Antonioni film
It's churlish to complain that Identification of a Woman isn't the equal of L'Avventura, La Notte, Red Desert, Blow Up, Zabriskie Point, or The Passenger. If it was, it would be a masterpiece of European art cinema. While it perhaps falls a little short of those Antonioni high points, it's nonetheless an intriguing and beautiful piece of work in its own right. The customary Antonioni themes - the elusiveness of desire, the fragility of identity, the mysteries of visual perspective, the unreliability of knowledge - are explored in typically elliptical and aleatory fashion, and lead towards a characteristically inconclusive but bafflingly moving ending. And along the way there are scenes that are the equal of Antonioni's best for mood, atmosphere and sheer cinematic creativity and skill. Niccolo and Mavi's drive into the fog is a scene of brilliant mystery and power. Their climb up the stairs of a swanky villa to an elite Roman soiree is an object lesson in how to use the camera and editing to generate a sense of foreboding and philosophical unease out of the simplest of materials. Niccolo and Ida's voyage out onto a Venetian lake is a gorgeous metaphor for their unfathomable relationship. And if anyone can tell me what that mysterious object in the tree - to which Antonioni keeps drawing us back - outside Niccolo's window is all about, I'd be grateful. The animated final scene of the film, which some viewers find a let-down, is brilliant - almost the equal in conception and weird appropriateness to the endings of Blow Up or Zabriskie Point. This is a film which improves with every viewing and ought to be embraced as the last significant work of a great master.

The last film of Antonioni
Maybe not as great as L'Avventura or La Notte, but still a great film. As in L'Avventura a girl disappears, and as in La Notte the protagonist is a director searching for a (new) woman to love. I liked this movie, the acting is good, the characters are interesting, the plot is captivating and the ending is ambiguous. And for about 7GBP it is good value for money. The transfer is good, though there are no extras. If you like Antonioni, you should buy/watch this one. Recommended!

Antonioni lost in the 1980s
A film director receives mysterious threats to end his affair with a young aristocrat woman. The woman then disappears. The director (& his next girlfriend) try to find the missing woman.
As might be evident from that brief synopsis, "Identification" is a half-hearted replay of the plot of Antonioni's breakthrough film "L'Avventura" - which is ironic as "Identification" turned out to be Antonioni's last proper film (before his debilitating stroke). There was a very long gap between "Identification" and the previous film "The Passenger" - that film was probably his peak & he may have realised it would be difficult to match & so lost heart & enthusiasm as he moved into old age.
With "Identification" Antonioni seems to have all but lost his grip as a director. The film breaks his usual rules and includes pointless voiceovers & flashbacks (& even an animated sci-fi ending!). Typical Antonioni ingredients are here but they border on self-parody (especially the heavy-handed dialogue). The film gained notoriety when released because of its sex scenes but the whole approach is surely that of a tired old man - the passionate love all these young women have for the morose ageing film director character lacks any credibility. Basically, the film prefigures the equally patchy "Beyond the Clouds" (made post-stroke with Wim Wenders).
I suppose the best thing that can be said is that Antonioni had always tried to capture the zeitgeist of each decade & here he makes a valiant attempt to capture the 1980s (rampant capitalism, heroin epidemic etc) complete with classic 80s clothes & haircuts & a synthi-pop soundtrack featuring Ultravox, Japan etc.
The DVD is ok - Mr Bongo have managed not to mess this one up, though the subtitle translations are sometimes laughably inept.