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MovieMail's Review
One of Antonioni's most accessible films, dealing with female independence and emotional alliances in five women's lives, there's also a lot going on under the surface, says Michael Brooke.
Michelangelo Antonioni's fourth feature, Le Amiche, is the most compellingly revealing of his early films. As the title ('The Girlfriends') implies, it could superficially be mistaken for a Hollywood feature like George Cukor's The Women or even a prototype for Sex in the City, given the number of scenes featuring well-dressed women discussing their lives, careers and associated romantic issues.
However, as you'd expect from this director (and source author Cesare Pavese), there's far more going on beneath the surface. Each of the five principal characters is meticulously characterised: there's fashion boutique owner Clelia (Eleonara Rossi Drago), ceramicist Nene (Valentina Cortese), wealthy, selfish Momina (Yvonne Furneaux), vain, flighty Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani) and psychologically troubled Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer), whose suicide attempt opens the film and which casts a long shadow over much of what follows.
Although there are various romantic entanglements with men, whether casual (Momina takes full advantage of her rich husband's lengthy absences and their well-appointed flat) or more heartfelt (Clelia's romance with lower-status Carlo; the triangle that develops between Rosetta, Nene and the latter's fiancé Lorenzo, a conspicuously less successful artist), the film is at its most articulate when dissecting the various differences between the women and their growing self-realisation.
In the process, Antonioni suggests that communication difficulties often have less to do with gender and class than with individual identity. He and his characters are acutely aware that identity is often indivisibly linked with personal circumstances, such as satisfaction in both love and work - which often chafe against each other, especially when one of the women is ultimately forced to choose between career and husband.
It's a reminder that for all the film's own strongly progressive views (in many respects it's dated remarkably little), it's set in a decidedly pre-feminist era, and that the price to be paid for true female independence seems to be increased psychological withdrawal. It's Antonioni's talkiest film by some distance, but also one of his most immediately accessible - though a scene involving various encounters on an otherwise deserted beach anticipates the direction he would take in L'Avventura five years later.
Beautiful new transfer of the film in its recent restoration by Cineteca di Bologna, L'Immagine Ritrovata, and Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation, in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, and presented in a 1080p AVC encode on the Blu-ray
A new and exclusive video introduction to the film with critic and teacher Gabe Klinger
A new and exclusive video featuring Gabe Klinger discussing the arc of Antonioni's entire career
Optional English subtitles
A lengthy booklet containing newly translated critical pieces about the film, excerpts of interviews with Antonioni, and more.
Film Description
A key film of Antonioni's middle-period, Le amiche (The Girlfriends) finds the Italian master expanding his palette in the realm of traditional narrative cinema by way of his powerhouse direction of an ensemble cast, while entrenching his devotion to expressing the emotional makeup of the modern woman.
Clelia (Eleonora Rossi-Drago) embarks from Rome to set up a fashion-salon in Torino. Shortly after arrival, she finds herself caught up in the dramas of a bourgeoise circle of acquaintances (including the iconic Valentina Cortese), and their attendant attempts at suicide, their class prejudices, and the romantic alliances that threaten to transform the social clique into an emotional tar-pit.
Le Amiche represents the epitome of Antonioni's 1950s period, and although it lays the groundwork for such later breakthroughs as L'Avventura and La Notte, it proves itself no less brilliant.
