The plot of the film has become a mere carrier, not important in itself: Anna, a rich girl, goes out to sea with her boyfriend Sandro and a group of rich children. The boat is parked on a desolate island in Sicily. Anna and Sandro had an altercation and disappeared mysteriously on the island. The development of the story unfolds on the search for Anna. Until the end of the film, Anna's whereabouts are still unknown. What the film wants to show is actually the empty life state of these characters. Ebert quoted the famous American female film critic Pauline Kael, comparing Antonioni's work with another Italian film master Fellini. If the characters in Fellini's lens are also heading for the endless emptiness, they are at least blindly optimistic and happy; and the people in L'Avventura are so extravagant and decadent that they can't be called alive. Sex is the only outlet for them to temporarily escape burnout and numbness. It can be said in one pungent sentence: They are like bookmarks in life. Holding places, but not involved in the story.
The photography of the whole film is very styled, especially the first half of the film is on the island. The vast, barren, grey reef stands silently, as if it had existed there for millennia. The lens shows the helplessness and insignificance of people against the background of the natural environment by switching between different long-range and short-range scenes. These characters live lavishly and sing every night, but the audience can feel their hollow interior and the power of a long-lost lover. It's not that they don't want to love, it's that they can't love anymore. In the last scene of the film, Sandro and Anna's friend Claudia are silent on the roof of the building with the rising sun in the early morning, facing the endless sky.
Movies from 46 years ago. Abstraction is philosophical, and it has the expressive power of pictures that cannot be underestimated. For moviegoers who have long lost their patience under the immersion of Hollywood's glittering blockbusters, watching such a movie is a bit like swallowing dry bread without drinking water. I'm afraid it is very depressing.
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