L'Avventura starts off as an intriguing mystery. Two friends, Anna and Claudia, along with Anna's dull boyfriend Sandro, go on a boating trip around Sicily. Anna is rather high maintenance — beautiful, rich, bored and basically a pain in the arse. She's also a bit fed up of Sandro so when she wanders off on a volcanic island where the boat stops, they all assume she's just being a drama queen. When she doesn't return, though, they begin to worry and eventually call in the authorities to hunt down the missing girl.
Where did she go? Did she hitch a ride on a passing trawler and escape to the country? Did she get kidnapped? Was she murdered or did she commit suicide? Oddly, the film doesn't actually care too much about this riddle and slowly (very slowly...) it's forgotten. We start to focus on other things, such as the burgeoning relationship between Claudia and Sandro and the warped world they live in. Is the director, Michelangelo Antonioni, making some arch comment on the irrelevance of the declining Italian aristocracy or was he just as bored and restless as his main characters and decided to move on to other subjects? Stuffed if I know.
What I do know, though, is that the film is incredible to look at and I'm not just talking about the stunning Monica Vitti who plays Claudia. The camera is constantly gazing at the wonders of the natural world around, as if the human beings are just a side note. Waves crash against the rocks, the wind howls, the sun rises over the sea and we even see a water spout. It's quite notable too, as it doesn't appear to be stock footage. The film crew were either incredibly lucky or incredibly patient to get that shot.
There are plenty of surreal touches, too, that just add to the strangeness of the film. The hermit who lives on the island, for example. Where did he come from and why isn't he even slightly bothered that a bunch of people have broken into his home? And the call-girl with the glorious name of Gloria Perkins who has an army of men following her wherever she goes. The film abounds with this stuff, scenes that are seemingly just played for fun rather than any narrative or thematic importance. Is there any secret meaning to it all or is it kept purposely vague to encourage us to decide its significance for ourselves? Whatever the case may be, it's certainly left an impression on me.
Incidentally, while watching L'Avventura I was very much reminded of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, so I watched that film again. They're actually not very similar at all. They both have missing people and a strange hypnotic sort of quality, but that's really where the comparison ends. Picnic at Hanging Rock should totally be on this list, though.
