164 - Le Amiche, 1955, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

164 - Le Amiche, 1955, Italy.  Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.

Love is in the air.

Well, not love, actually, but a dull loneliness that will settle for whatever affection is available at the moment.

That is in the air.

In the air in which these women live.  These modern women who live in a world of art and shopping and contemplating relationships.

And existential ennui.

Soren Kierkegaard published Either/Or in 1843.  But it was a little over hundred years later that middle class boredom became a commodity in the West.

George Cukor made The Women in 1939.

Sex and the City first came on the air in 1998.

In between those two events Michelangelo Antonioni debuted with The Girlfriends,  And gave the world an Italian film style other than neorealism, the cinema of possibilities.

And after spending time with Roberto Rosellini and Federico Fellini and Vittorio de Sica, we can see immediately that there is something different about Antonioni.  Something modern and layered.

Clelia is a fashion designer from Turin.  She left for Rome and became successful.  Now she has returned to open a branch of her Ferrari Salon in her hometown.

But times have changed since she left, and she needs a new circle of friends with whom to run around.

If only the girl in the next hotel room over had not tried to commit suicide.

Rosetta Savone is depressed about something.  Lorenzo cannot figure out why.  After all, they had a good time last night.  They left the club around 3:00.  He dropped her off at the hotel.  Everything was great.

Could his wife Nene have anything to do with it?

The morning after Rosetta takes her overdose of sleeping pills, Clelia is pulled into the room by the police to answer questions.  Rosetta's friend Momina arrives for their day date and discovers what happened.  Clelia and Momina join forces, and Clelia becomes a part of Momina's retinue of friends.

They go shopping.  They go out to eat.  They talk about men.  They talk about trends.

Clelia is trying to get the slow-poke contractors to finish building her salon while also planning her next fashion show.

Momina is married, but we never see her husband.  He lives somewhere else, and Momina likes it that way.  She dates various men, including the architect designing Clelia's new salon.

Meanwhile, Clelia sort-of hooks up with the architect's assistant.

They go to the beach.

As the men and women interact with one another, it begins to feel somewhat like a midsummer night's dream, with people pairing off with different people in superficially random ways.

But the love triangle among Nene, Lorenzo, and Rosetta is not a dream.  It is real and has real consequences for Nene and Rosetta.

Lorenzo is a painter who has just had an unsuccessful art show.  In fact, even some of the purchased paintings have been returned.  Nene is a maker of ceramics who has just been invited to show in America.  Her star is on the rise while his is in decline.

Momina presses the issue when she encourages Rosetta to go for Lorenzo openly despite Nene's feelings.

Among her other pieces of advice, Momina offers this nugget: "Handsome princes today snort cocaine and dance the mambo."  If you do not go for it now you will live a life of regret.

Rosetta goes for it.

But she gets her regret anyway.

And does not live a life.

She had been searching for more all along.  On the train with Clelia she had asked, "Why go on living--so I can decide what dress to wear?"

If only love really had been in the air.

Or rather, in her heart.

Or maybe modern man needs to rediscover what love is.

Meanwhile, we have discovered an exciting new film director.  Let us see what other Antonioni movies await us.