A woman mysteriously disappears during a yachting trip to a derelict island off the Italian coast, whereupon the group of friends accompanying her lethargically conduct some sort of search effort. This is a contemplative, slow-moving study of decadence and apathy among the Italian bourgeois. Most everything bore these people, even the disappearance of a friend - and in turn, they certainly know how to bore us back. Michelangelo Antonioni has an angle and something to say, but offers no pretext for why we should care, and his film lacks style and purpose. It's a drab movie about drabness - all parable, no heart. Antonioni cannot even make a trip to beautiful Taormina cinematic. With Gabriele Ferzetti as the supposed playboy Sandro, Lea Massari as his lover who disappears, and Monica Vitti as the girl caught in the middle.
Review of L'Avventura
