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Identification of a Woman
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Wikipedia article
'Identification of a Woman' is a 1982 Italian drama film written, directed, and edited by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Toms Milin, Daniela Silverio, and Christine Boisson. The film is about an Italian filmmaker searching for a woman to play the leading role in his next film, and also in his life. Filmed on location in Rome and Venice, 'Identification of a Woman' was awarded the 35th Anniversary Prize at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. Despite its mixed reviews upon release, 'Identification of a Woman' is considered to be Antonioni's last major work and is noted for its direction, atmosphere and cinematography.
Plot
The existence of Niccol, a film director living in Rome, is empty. He has no new film to make, no woman in his life, and his only family is his sister, a gynaecologist, and her little son. He approaches one of his sister's patients, a beautiful young aristocrat called Mavi, and the two start a passionate affair.
It proves empty, since Niccol has no interest in her family and titled friends, a feeling they reciprocate, and introduces her to no friends of his. Worse, Niccol finds he is under surveillance and is even explicitly warned off Mavi. Who these threats emerge from she does not say and he never finds out. To escape his shadowers in Rome, he takes Mavi out to an old farmhouse he has rented, but the drive there through fog is traumatic and they quarrel violently. In the morning Mavi has vanished. Searching for her back in Rome, the only friend of hers who will talk to him warns Niccol that Mavi is bisexual and hints at a jealous past lover.
Wanting company and affection, Niccol meets a young stage actress called Ida, slim and athletic like Mavi, a working-class girl who loves the country and is not brittle or mysterious but utterly open. While she is happy to sleep with him, she realises that he is still longing for Mavi and sets him on the trail to find her present address. Listening on the stairs, Niccol hears Mavi tell the girl with whom she shares a flat that she must keep on hiding from him.
Accepting at last that Mavi will never come back, he takes Ida for a romantic holiday in Venice. There she gets a phone call from her doctor in Rome, who confirms that she is pregnant. Delicately, she tells Niccol that she does love him but her loyalty must now be to the father of the baby.
Back alone in Rome, Niccol starts musing about his next film. He imagines a spaceship built of asteroid material that could approach the sun. He recalls telling his young nephew about space travel, saying, "The day mankind understands what the sun is made of and its power, perhaps we'll understand the entire universe and the reasons behind so many things." His nephew responds, "And then?"
Cast
The cast includes the following:
* Toms Milin as Niccol
* Daniela Silverio as Mavi
* Christine Boisson as Ida
* Lara Wendel as Girl in swimming pool
* Veronica Lazar as Carla
* Enrica Antonioni as Nadia
* Sandra Monteleoni as Mavi's sister
* Marcel Bozzuffi as Mario
* Gianpaolo Saccarola as The gorilla
* Arianna De Rosa as Mavi's friend
* Dado Ruspoli as Mavi's father
* Carlos Alberto Valles as Close-up man
* Sergio Tardioli as Butcher
* Itaco Nardulli as Lucio
* Paola Domingun as Girl in window
Reception
Antonioni was awarded with the "35th Anniversary Prize" at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
Upon its release in the United States, Vincent Canby called the film "an excruciatingly empty work" and "beautiful and sad—virtually a parody of the director's great 'L'Avventura' and some of his other earlier films." In an October 2011 essay published to accompany a release of a Criterion Collection edition, critic John Powers pointed out that the film had been made when Antonioni was nearing seventy: "this is one of those autumnal movies—think 'Rio Bravo' or 'An Autumn Afternoon'—in which an aging director allows himself to be more relaxed and genial than in his most finely tuned work. Far from serving up a major statement about the human condition—something Antonioni was never shy about doing—'Identification of a Woman' comes tinged with modesty and irony. His first feature set in Italy since 1964s 'Red Desert', it finds him taking a provisional measure of how the modern world has been shifting around him."
References
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