It's easy to watch this Michelangelo Antonioni study in alienation and lament how boring it is, but just try to get it out of you mind during the days after. Monica Vitti is a woman who, after a traffic accident, slips slowly into insanity. With her attention seeking son and disengaged husband all she has, she finds herself oddly attracted to Richard Harris (one of her husband's business associates). That Harris is also attracted to the unstable Vitti is another oddity in this perplexing movie. That a viewer can be affected by these two is Antonioni's genius. They're alienated and getting more alienated by a world (the director, working in color for the first time, reminds us that the factories that make up the world are dwarfing us) that prioritizes progress, humanity and justice, in THAT order. To say this is an unhappy film would be a wild understatement. It's horrifyingly sad. Vitti is the epitome of earthy angst and Harris, criticized by even Antonioni as miscast, is in fact fine as the cool, repulsed yet attracted suitor. With the French stripper Rita Renoir as one of Vitti's more adventuresome friends.
Review of Red Desert
