it's because I don't love you anymore."
----- Lidia "La notte" (Night)
One day, you suddenly feel that love disappears silently,
perhaps like the movie "La Lidia and Giovanni of "Notte" (Night) are at a loss and panic.
The director special of the London bfi in June is my favorite Michelangelo Antonioni.
ecstatic.
I borrowed the DVD of "Blow Up" from a friend two years ago. I remember the shock of the camera chasing the female model. Then Hong Kong Broadway Film Center bc sunday replayed his collaboration with Wim Wenders "Beyond the Clouds" (the day on the clouds), there is no one more intimate relationship between male and female love and desire than he filmed. I have been looking for the OST of "Beyond the Clouds", but there is no trace of it even on the Internet. I knew earlier that "Eros" was released in Hong Kong, but it was a pity that London's non-mainstream movies have been slow to release. There is even no bfi special this time, just helpless.
"La notte" is the second part of Antonioni's love trilogy. Among the Italian directors of the late Second World War, Antonioni is the only one who is still alive today, and his peers Fellini, Pasolini and Visconti have all passed away long ago. He was born in 1912, and he was a pioneer of Neorealism in Italy in the 1940s. In 1956, "Le Amiche" (Girlfriend) won a Venice Silver Lion Award, but he has not yet become famous. What really made him a master was the trilogy about alienated love: "L'Avventura" (fascination) in 1960, "La notte" (night) in 1961, and "L'Eclisse" (eclipse) in 1962 . Other famous names such as "Blow up" (Happy Together) and "Red Desert" (Red Desert) are all later.
The story of "La notte", like all stories of Antonioni, is fragmented without cause and effect. The movie is actually so beautiful. It tells the story of a couple who have been married for ten years from a Saturday afternoon to early Sunday morning in 122 minutes. The husband is a well-known writer, and both are rich people. Together they went to visit an old friend who was critically ill, attended a new book launch together, went to a nightclub together, and went to a party together. There were no quarrels, but no intimate conversations. The husband did not hug his wife, nor did the wife cling to her husband. It's like a natural couple, but the emotional alienation is not too loud. In the end, the two were shocked to find that their love was dead, and they didn't want to admit and then kissed frantically, trying to save something like a primitive animal to play their instincts. Ironically, the only intimate behavior between the two of them began after they announced that they were not in love.
Antonioni's movie is a kind of pornography without caressing. Both men and women can have not touched each other, but the walk of the camera is more tempting than naked erotic scenes. In the play, the husband met a young and beautiful girl at a party. The two squatted on the ground to play chess. The girl’s sexy dress and perfect figure were a temptation, but both of them ignored it as usual; and the camera was focused on in a nightclub. The performance of sexy dancers, but the couple only calmly discussed the creative inspiration, which is a kind of indifference. The contrast between cold and hot is shocking because it is unusual. Indifference and enthusiasm are twins.
Good movies have unforgettable plots. Some of "La notte" is a scene of a party at night, beginning in a nightclub. If the theme of the movie is to tell the alienation between people, the party scene is the finishing touch. Talking to someone you don’t know that doesn’t make the itch, talking to this person for a few minutes and then talking to that person for a few minutes, the fundamental meaning is to practice absurdity. The husband fell in love with the young girl at the party, and the wife was ignorant with the strange man at the party. The old friend died in the hospital at this time, but the living people were doing boring things. These were climaxes. Until the end of the song, the husband and wife walked back home again, but both knew that love was gone. At the end, the wife read a love letter aloud. Many people criticized it as a superfluous act, but it was inevitable. Wandering from the party, suddenly staying on a page of love letter, it turns out that love is dead, even listening patiently is too much. "La notte" is not very important in Antonioni's movie, maybe it is the love letter of this scene.
The last film Antonioni directed by himself was "Identification d'une femme" (Looking for an Ideal Woman) in 1982. Because the master was paralyzed by a heart attack in 1985, it was inconvenient to speak and move. Even if you have a better idea, you can only rely on younger generations such as Wim Wenders and Wong Kar Wai. It's a pity, but it's just right. Compared to Godard's late remnants, Antonioni is just like his eroticism, only fantasy and expectation, and more beautiful.
View more about La Notte reviews
