Interesting script structure

I watched this for the umpteenth time, and still think it's one of Antonioni's best. At the very least, you don't feel like slitting your wrists after watching it.

Along with "Red Desert", it's also probably his most formally strong. The film's hyper-lush and the women, conjured up by the director-within-the-film, are all deliberately ultra-idealized, at least until they begin to bite back.

The film repeats some material from "Identification of a Woman", but its "short story" format gives it a greater sense of urgency and a more abstract quality.

One thing I like about the script is the way its different sub sections suggest a kind of "evolution" in the characters' approach to love. So in the first short story, you have an awkward, young couple who are far too nervous to even meet. Instead they stay in seperate rooms and fantasize about each another. The whole film is about closing that gap between their bedrooms. The second story then involves a couple who bare themselvse to each another but can't touch. With the third short story you finally have sexual intimacy, this time between the deliberately hideous Malkovich/Antonioni character and a woman who Malkovich/Antonioni essentially conjures up. Significantly, she's a shopgirl, and Antonioni's wife is right beside her, cast in the role of being cast aside. In this scene, Malkovich/Antonioni is almost metaphysically raping or forcing himself upon her.

Prior to this substory, there was no sex, only supercharged eroticism. In each of these stories, love and romance are entirely defined by the eye, camera, visual imagination and the director (Antonioni/Malkovich). But then with the fourth and fifth story - immediately after the couple have sex - disillusionment sets in and the relationships either collapse or are attempted to be supported with nihilistic sex. Women, meanwhile, increasingy start defining how the men see. These two short stories also all also involve middle aged couples - all balding, all the same guy - whose love lives are litterally being evacuated (apartment stripped apart and so forth). The sixth short story then revolves around a sort of post-sexual, post-erotic relationship between an elderly couple in their twilight years who have "given up on capturing the past". The seventh sub story then involves a celiblate Christian who renounces erotic/sexual/romantic love in favour for a sacrificial love; you essentially move from selfish to selfless love.

The film is also a bit autobiographical. Most of the stories here are from a book Antonioni published a while back. At the time of shooting he was also suffering from a stroke which prevented him from speaking. The "hero" in the film is also almost silent, and goes about the film with a camera, essentially willing stories into life.



"Rape is no laughing matter. Unless you're raping a clown."