Identificazione di una donna (1982) Reviews

• An underrated and brilliant film worth watching.

  Xanadu-21999-10-09

  A very beautiful film with that special Antonioni atmosphere. I can identify with the feeling of emptiness and the people who can´t really communicate with each other. Modern life and adulthood seems shallow and a bit soulless. You have to fill it with something and make it human again. The first time I saw it I was disapointed but it improved greatly with the second viewing and I want to see it again. There are new things to discover each time as with all of Antonionis´ films.

• Staccato

  tieman642010-06-10

  "Men get laid, but women get screwed." - Quentin Crisp Man returns to his empty home. Man tries to outsmart security alarm but sets it off. Concerned neighbour arrives, asking if there has been a break in. Man says no. Later he will dismiss the existence of robbers altogether: "people of the night are innocents like us". Where, then, does misunderstanding and paranoia originate? Man is revealed to be film director in search of the subject matter of his next film. Man uses relationship with women to fuel his imagination. Man's proclamation: "woman is art." Film's title? "Identification of a Woman"; a search for the perfect woman, perfect work of art - the idealised image. Director Michelangelo Antonioni develops theme: study of female form inspires the nature of the cinematic form. Art and sex intertwine, a libidinal extension of male artist. Man believes himself to be creator, conqueror, artist. Man believes woman to be object, passive, art. Film exposes male arrogance: woman should be like nature. Relationship with woman should be filled with mutual silence, her innate physical responsiveness mirroring the purely physical and silent response of the wild outdoors. She should be passive and non-judgemental. More importantly, woman should be without an identity and completely without a gaze. In other words, perfect woman is without eyes, perfect woman is devoid of perception, perfect woman is submission, perfect woman is robot. We recall the robot alarm that catches its owner sneaking into his own home. When the robot sees, the subject feels guilt. Film director embarks on two affairs with two different woman. First relationship marked by wild, carnal sex. Couple seemingly content, but relationship confined to bedroom. Relationship expands and man feels belittled by woman's wealthy friends, family and air of sophistication. Being with woman means being in her gaze, being subjected to her opinions, perceptions and "universe". Man wants woman stripped down, devoid of all context but his own. A "mysterious man" leaves threatening messages. He orders director to stay away from first woman. In response: alarm bells. Hero grows paranoid and takes first woman to remote location where he can have her "all for himself". On the way to remote location, couple is trapped in fog. Fog represents truth of their relationship: they are mystery to one another, living in a haze, sharing flesh and nothing else. Couple reach remote location – a home in the woods – and find it inhabited by strangers. Ontological shock: man cannot have woman alone. The closer man gets, the more he is forced to accept that he has to share. Man cannot cope. He loses woman to, he believes, the "mysterious man". But there is no "mysterious man". He is a figment of the imagination. Paranoia. Jealousy. Competition. Woman as barred subject and fictional Other as harbourer of all pleasure. It is too much. To cope: first woman revealed or rationalised to be lesbian. Scar her. Woman walks by a department store window where a display model of a naked man stands. Woman tells man that her friends love the model and often take pictures of it. Scene offers ironic commentary on love: attraction starts with the body and the eye (camera), and the presence of the body and its signs is that which creates the imaginary romantic link between two people. The model in the window is the male equivalent of the alluring, one-dimensional silent partner that the male director wants to find for his cinematic inspiration. Man and first woman split. Director then embarks on relationship with second woman. She is identical image of first woman. Difference: aroused by horses, by nature, looks up to director, has no class, no social ties. She pees on toilet seat, naked, wipes herself. Kubrick borrows image. Antonioni steals from Godard's "Contempt". Modernist interests intersect. Director gradually revealed to be visually and tactilely oriented. He ignores words. Male brain: sight and touch. Case in point: telephone conversation where he meets first woman. He asks for her to visually describe herself. His eye is attuned to the perfect camera angle. When he looks at women, he makes them uncomfortable. "Are you trying to frame a shot?" they ask. (again, links to Freud and Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut", where man's desires exist in image space, woman's desires recounted in the realm of words and monologues) We meet a strange girl at poolside. She says she prefers being masturbated by other woman, rather than having sex with men. According to her, men only use sex as an occasion to express their virility, strength and dominance. Man and new woman share time. He pushes her away from public events. He wants her to himself. He takes her on a boat, out in the middle of the ocean. Alone. He tells her that he can best love her in solitude, her surrounded by him, everything else excluded. Solitude shattered in next scene. Woman magically reveals she is pregnant. Man knows it is not his baby. Again, the intrusion of some Other man's desire. Man wants only his uninterrupted desires. Furthermore, man doesn't think "mother" can be artistic muse, a mysterious presence, an erotic gravitational force. Muse must be object. Art. Ambiguous ending. Silly spaceship travels toward sun. Can the sun be understood? Can its energy be harnessed? How close can the spaceship get, before burning up? Can the erotic attraction, the gravitational pull, of two ordinary everyday people exist without either becoming banal or exploding in a ball of self-destructive fire? Is this the illness of the idealist or the artist? Antonioni doesn't say. Film's last words: "And thereafter?" 8/10 – First viewing: boring, annoying. Second viewing: film inserts its fangs and sucks you in, every scene ominous, powerful. Antonioni: proto-feminist, captures the modern condition, loves ellipses, fascinating.

• Antonioni returns to Italy a more relaxed man.

  Ben_Cheshire2004-06-25

  (sort of spoilers, i suppose) Identification of a Woman was Antonioni's first film in Italy since the beautiful Red Desert. And its a quieter, more mature film than his international films. I'm glad I saw Identification of a Woman because it contains one of Antonioni's most beautiful sequences: the scenes in the fog, with people disappearing and reappearing. And also because we have something here we don't always have: characters and what almost resembles a story. We have an Antonioni-esque film director looking for the ideal female face for his next film. I think the film's about how men misunderstand women. They're only spying on them (spying is a recurring motif in the film), looking on from the outside, as if they were merely faces: I think this is why the (approximate) story of the film centres on a man looking for the perfect face for his new movie (ie, not the perfect woman). Be prepared, though, to not hold up hopes that Antonioni will stick with this story - because its left for you to decide whether a face, or a woman, are identified. This is not a flaw in the film - it was Antonioni's trademark. But if you only had so many hours of your life to spare for Antonioni films, i don't recommend you use up two on this one. It definitely doesn't have the passion and enthusiasm of Zabriskie Point - aside from his great works (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse, Red Desert, The Passenger), i'd recommend you see the visually exhilirating Zabriskie Point instead of this. Caution: fairly extreme nudity and sex, mostly not of an erotic nature, but fairly intense (not rape or anything like that... just fairly hungry, physical sex).

• Weak but interesting Antonioni film

  zetes2002-01-22

  This is probably obvious, but if you don't like Antonioni, stay away from Identification of a Woman. If you've never seen another, check out one of these films first: L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse, Red Desert, Blowup, The Passenger, or Zabriskie Point. If you are a fan of Antonioni, like myself, please do check out this film. It is definitely one of Antonioni's weaker films, but it is still undeniably in his style and containing his regular themes. This one is about a film director who can be said to fall in love with a woman (who, incidentally, looks a lot like a very young and extraordinarily thin version of Monica Vitti), but he can't express that love. The woman is upset at this and disappears. In some ways, this is like a weaker version of L'Avventura. The man tries to get on with his life, begins dating again, but eventually realizes that his mind revolves around the girl who abandoned him. This film is disappointing, especially if you're in love with Antonioni the director. The direction is generally flat. Only a few scenes show his supreme visual style. 6/10.

• IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1982) **1/2

  Bunuel19762007-08-15

  Antonioni's last film prior to his suffering a stroke is this very typical effort (co-written with Gerard Brach and Tonino Guerra), dealing with a number of key themes that run through his work – lack of communication, the mystery-as-journey-of-self-discovery, etc. That said, the film wasn't picked up for U.S. release until 1996 and is consequently perhaps the least-seen of Antonioni's films from his post-AVVENTURA phase! Anyway, the mystery element links the film with the director's earlier BLOW UP (1966) and THE PASSENGER (1975); still, it's never as intriguing here as in those more celebrated titles (especially since, for once, it's explained away at the end!)…but, as I said, the film eventually emerges to be more about the mid-life crisis of its central character (despite the title). Interestingly, he's a film director – though "Euro-Cult" favorite Tomas Milian feels as incongruous to Antonioni's cinema as Marcello Mastroianni's presence had been in LA NOTTE (1961)! He has an obsessive relationship with a young woman (even enjoying some LAST TANGO IN Paris [1972]-type sex scenes!) 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). Marcel Bozzuffi appears in one brief, irrelevant scene as Milian's brother. Overall, the film is tiresomely long and often mirrors the tedium experienced by the characters; the ending, however, is a beauty – suggesting that, even if he's a failure at love, a film director is still left with his imagination. Carlo Di Palma's cinematography is notable, too – particularly at the Venice location (where, coincidentally, I saw the Antonionis three years ago!) and during the tense fog-bound sequence; the film's score, then, is a mix of electronic, ambient and pop – and all very much of its period. As was the case with THE PASSENGER, THE MYSTERY OF OBERWALD (which is now one of only two features by the director I've yet to catch up with!) and BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), Antonioni had a hand in the editing of the film; here, he receives sole credit for this and the result makes especially effective use of ellipses (the factors of time and space had always been a primary concern in his work – thus making the apparently mocking recourse to science-fiction at the end anything but coincidental!).