IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN (Identificazione di una donna) (director/writer/editor: Michelangelo Antonioni; screenwriter: Gérard Brach; cinematographer: Carlo Di Palma; cast: Tomas Milian (Niccolo), Christine Boisson (Ida), Daniela Silverio (Mavi), Marcel Bozzuffi (Mario), Enrica Antonioni (Nadia), Carlos Valles (Close-up man), Lara Wendel (Girl in swimming pool), Veronica Lazar (Carla); Runtime: 130; Iter Film; 1982-Italy)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The great Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni (Red Desert/L'Avventura/Blow Up), has directed a lugubrious story about an Italian film director Niccolo (Tomas Milian) searching for a woman to star in his next film. Niccolo is also looking for an attractive woman to replace the wife who recently divorced him. Identification of a Woman was not released in American theaters until some 20 years after the film was made. The moody atmospheric film moves at a snail's pace, giving me the impression that it is about to say something important, but everything turns out to lead forlornly down a dead-end. Also, the main characters are not the nicest of people, making it difficult to sympathize with them. It could be said that this was one of the director's more trying melodramatic efforts, except for the stylish photography and the use of Mediterranean shades of yellow, orange and brown for its outside shots, and for the indoor shots of the many rooms it shows, there are various shades of blue, to give the film a pleasing artistic look.
For Antonioni, contrast is the main thing to show about life: as sometimes things go good, sometimes things go rotten. The story, the dialogue, the characters, and the pace of the film are done in such a lethargic way, that it radically diminishes the love story. Even the sex, which was plentiful, is carried out in such an unenthusiastic way, that it wasn't erotic. Yet, what gives the film a certain sense of elegance, underlying its ennui, is that the director is aiming all his guns at being thematic. His emphasis is on how alienated modern society has become, how people not only can't communicate with each other, but they too often are not tuned into the ones they are with. This is a film that could only expect to be well-received by a receptive intellectual audience of Antonioni film buffs, who have the patience and understanding to embrace its arcane premises, vexing story, and the litany of existential themes the director is prone to.
Mystery is injected into the story in the opening scene, as Niccolo is warned by a man, in a face to face meeting, to stay away from the woman. The man refuses to identify himself or say who he is working for. That woman is Mavi (Daniela Silverio), a socialite he is currently seeing. Niccolo is anxious to find out who she knew that might be doing this, but his search is done in such a half-hearted way, that it creates little tension.
The film's main purpose is not the story or the mystery, but in showing the difficulty it is to have a successful relationship in these civilized times. Everyone's life seems to be too complicated to just love each other without finding other reasons to either breakup or stay together.
The film goes out of its way to show how alienated and isolated the main characters are: Mavi and Niccolo are driving in a fog that is so thick one can't see anything, as they get lost for awhile while walking on the highway; there are countless shots of doors opening and closing and of serious people talking to each other but not communicating. There is a philosophical question asked by a disgruntled Mavi to her lover, "If man didn't exist, would God exist?
The pivotal place of clearing up the mystery of who the threatening man is, becomes the gathering Niccolo attends among Mavi's acquaintainces. The only logical thing Niccolo can say at the party to Mavi is, " Do all your parties have this sectarian atmosphere? " It is at this party where the 20-year-old Mavi learns that her father was one of her mother's many lovers, someone Mavi has always detested. Niccolo will never learn who is spying on him, but always suspects that it is her father.
Mavi runs away from Niccolo at his country home where they go to escape from being spied upon, saying to him that he doesn't love her but just needs her to survive. She will find a woman as her next lover. In Rome, he continues his search for inspiration and love. At the theater he meets an attractive young girl by chance, Ida (Christine Boisson), and they start an affair. Their relationship comes to a head when they go on a three-day winter holiday to the desolate lagoons of Venice and she tells him that she is pregnant by someone she met before seeing him. He learns this after he asked her to marry him and she tells him she is madly in love with him. He must now answer the question if he could be a father to a child who wasn't his. The answer is that he leaves her and decides he can't make the love story film he wanted and decides to make an escapist science fiction film instead, as he can't choose from what is likely and what is unlikely in life. Therefore, he will make a film that is impossible to digest, about spacemen going to the sun to find out what the source of power means to mankind.
It's a film stuck on ideas and many metaphors, but they are dragged around by a static story, trying too hard to show how negative and cold the world has become. The film is not helped by having its central character being such a selfish and uncaring dolt, while pretending to be an intellectual. Most of the warmth in the film came from the photography, which is not enough of a reason for me to get over how vacant the story felt. Yet, it is a film from the master director Antonioni, covering his favorite theme of alienation, and he is someone whose poorer films are still worth seeing, as there is always some nugget to be found. The nugget I found, is that the director is suggesting that in this "age of alienation," it is more fun and realistic to make a childlike fantasy film than an idealized love story.
REVIEWED ON 11/5/2000 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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