I caught this one on blu-ray and was in a hurry to turn it around so I sent it back after I watched it and checked out the DVD at the library for special features - LOL
L'Avventura is a bit of a mystery - a woman vanishes on a boat trip but what's interesting about the story is for 30 minutes the story focuses on the woman - she is the center of our attention and our viewpoint into the world, so when she vanishes, all the ancillary characters suddenly become our focus and we're left a bit lost - which was the intent I believe - it's an unusual film for 1960, and it had a profound influence that I'm just now learning about.
As a whole, there's some beautiful scenery of southern Sicily, and the story kept my interest. In a way it felt a little like the Douglas Sirk movies I just went thru - this is sort of a bored upper class movie, like those were, and you get the impression that there's not much keeping some of these people going besides sex and obligation. A young woman married to a man over 50 quickly finds a way to seduce a 17 year old, and the missing woman's fiancee and her best friend are soon hooking up while they're searching for her - I'm not sure if that's an Italian thing or not but anyways...
I'm going to go thru the special features, there's like an hour documentary - I have never heard of the director or any of the actors/actresses and I guess it took a bit of a beating at the Cannes film festival but it redeemed itself later on.
Pretty good - maybe worth a 2nd runthru with the commentary on DVD but I'd speed it up - at 2hrs 20 minutes it does seem a little long - LOL
RB
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