Le amiche

Viewed today Michaelangelo Antonioni's "Le Amiche" feels like a dry-run for his great trilogy of alienation that began with "LAvventura". This movie isn't in the same class but it is still very fine. It's like Cukor's "The Women" minus the laughs as lonely, pragmatic Clelia, (an excellent Eleonora Rossi Drago), returns to her native Turin and falls in with a group of rich, bored and, in one case, suicidal women and equally bored and cynical men, the one exception being Carlo, (Ettore Manni), with whom she starts some kind of relationship.

If it's not quite as densely plotted as "L'Avventura" and if there are no set-pieces to equal those that were to come later in Antonioni's work it nevertheless displays a very cool intelligence that never panders to the clichés of this kind of female orientated picture; there are no hints of lesbianism and the friendships are fickle at best. Even as early as 1955 Antonioni was hooked on that old ennui. Not one of his masterpieces, perhaps, but an essential part of the Antonioni canon all the same.

Lighter (at times), more emotionally complex, yet symbolically simpler than later films by Antonioni. This reminded me more of Fellini, Woody Allen, and (in the lighter, early moments) even Almodovar.

It goes without saying that the film is great looking (could Antonioni frame a bad shot?). And it has lots of plot, surprising from a filmmaker who soon after ran from traditional plot and story. Lovers change hands, lives rise and fall among five female friends (artists, clothing designers, etc).

This is labeled a masterpiece by some, but to me it felt a bit too soapy, and some of the characters and performances a bit one note or on-the-nose to raise it to quite that level. I was never bored, and the images were thrilling, but I didn't find myself caring deeply on a conventional level, nor drawn in on a more intellectual, poetic level as the later Antonioni films do. But all that said, I'm still glad I saw it.

Michelangelo Antonioni seems to adjust his visual style with his subject matter. In the very slow 'Red Desert', which is more or less a dissertation on how industrial surroundings inspire fatigue, the camera (as I recall) moved rarely.

Contrast 'Red Desert' with 'Le amiche', a nearly plot less gem. In doing so we begin to appreciate Antonioni's visual plan. In 'amiche', the camera is frequently moving; scenes typically begin with people passing through the frame and the cutting is brisk. The visuals perfectly match the overall theme of glib, upper-class, attractive adults stumbling into love and reacting to heartache. Just as the characters are free from the burdens the working class endure, so too Antonioni's camera work is free and lively.

Visually, 'Le amiche' is striking; superb. The cast is very strong (and beautiful). The economic class consciousness is also a powerful subtext.

Modern audiences may chuckle at how often (and nearly everywhere) the characters smoke cigarettes. They smoke at home, at their workplaces, restaurants, diners, fashion salons, hotel lobbies, outdoors and indoors. Was there any place where smoking was not allowed in 1950s Italy?

While in Turin for the opening and managing of a branch of a fashion salon from Roma, the elegant Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) finds the young Rosetta Savone (Madeleine Fischer) near death on the next room of her hotel after taking an overdose of sleeping pills trying to commit suicide. Clelia, who is alone in her hometown Turin, befriends Rosetta and her wealthy friends Momina De Stefani (Yvonne Furneaux), who is separated from her husband and easily replaces lovers; Nene (Valentina Cortese), a talented artist in ascension in her career married to the frustrated painter Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti) that envies the success of his wife; and the futile Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani). Meanwhile, Clelia feels attracted by Carlo (Ettore Manni), the assistant of the salon's architect Cesare Pedoni (Franco Fabrizi), but he belongs to the working class living in a different social reality. When Momina and Clelia discover that the reason why Rosetta tried to commit suicide is because she felt in love for Lorenzo, the cynical Momina encourages Rosetta to stay with Lorenzo with tragic consequences.

Michelangelo Antoniani is the filmmaker of the troubled relationships and conflictive emotions and "Le Amiche" is a story about friendship and love disclosing female characters from the upper class that spend most of their times together with their empty and shallow lives. Rosetta is a needy and naive rich girl that falls in love for a painter that painted her portrait and attempts for commit suicide for the non-corresponded love. Momina is selfish, cynical and materialist that does not attach to any man and does not respect her friends. Nene is an insecure woman that sacrifices her promising career to stay with her unfaithful husband in crisis, forgiving him in the end. Mariella is simply a futile woman. Clelia is the opposite, a strong woman that came from the working class and has had a social ascension due to her work. Eleonora Rossi Drago, Madeleine Fischer, Yvonne Furneaux and Valentina Cortese give magnificent performances in the development of these rich characters, supported by great dialogs and wonderful cinematography in black and white. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazi): Not Available

This is a little-seen 1955 film by Michelangelo Antonioni, shot before he really got into the sort of directorial wonderment's of L'Avventura and The Eclipse in the 1960's. In fact one has to have seen several of his films, if not an outright fan of his work, to appreciate that it's one of his films.

It's really a melodrama that is given a one-up from its soap-opera tendencies in its story by Antonioni's fluid camera style and the performances. There are little moments- again if you know his work a little bit- where you can see the inklings of what would come in the prime of his career as an art-house theater master. But if you're a newcomer to his work it works just as well, if not better, because of how it is told without pretense.

Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) is set to run a fashion salon. She becomes apart of a group of fairly well-off late-20, early-30-something women after one of the girls, Rosetta (Madeline Fischer) overdoses on pills. She becomes close to them, or close as she would want to be, and sees how close-knit they are - and, as girlfriends can tend to be, occasionally vicious in verbal ways, such as a scene on a beach that is shaky at best and volatile at worst - and also their romantic relationships.

One of them is an affable architect, Cesare, who becomes closer to Momina (the older one of the group), and Clelia becomes attracted to Carlo, Cesare's assistant, which brings up some class issues as he's not, shall we say, as "well-off" as everybody else. Meanwhile, Rosetta tries to bring back some normalcy or just stability to her situation, but she falls for Lorenzo, a painter, who is already romantically involved with Nene, another of the girlfriends.

Their confrontation about the Lorenzo situation, between Nene and Rosetta, with Nene mostly talking, is one of the more startling things about the film. Again, a lot of this could be construed as soap-opera stuff: she sleeps with him, he sleeps with her, she's jealous of her, she's spiteful of her, so on and so on. But that one scene, where Nene tells Rosetta off, is powerful because it's not as over the top as one might expect.

It comes at a point in the film where there has already been some drama (again, the very wonderful beach scene, with its slight, subtle nod to the scenes at the rocky coast in L'Avventura), and it's a scene that gains its power from how simply Nene speaks about the affair and how she feels about it. It's moments like that, or when Rosetta walks with her lover on a street and they talk, that make it so worthwhile as drama. Antonioni casts the group very well, which helps, especially for Rosetta, who is played by Fischer as a fragile person but not so weak as to always be pushed around. And the male actors are surprising in their sensitivity to their roles.

It's is one of the director's finer films, and a good introduction to his work if not by way of the sort of existential malaise of a La Notte or Red Desert then to the underrated attention to characters and emotions Antonioni can have when he's most focused, and in classic black and white no less shot by the great Gianni Di Venanzo. It's like Lifetime for mature people, and lovers of 1950's-set Italian cinema (or, to put it another way, like a "chick-flick" version of Fellini's I Vittelloni).