Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Identification of a Woman (1982)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Very much the film of an elder statesman arrogantly conscious of being the most 'modern' director of his generation. It is a contemporary love story - based upon a film-maker's chance encounters with two women - designed to bury the controversies of his courageous video manifesto (The Oberwald Mystery) and to regain access to Hollywood. Visually this is perhaps Antonioni's most beautiful film to date, effortlessly fleshing out familiar themes around the difficulties of establishing relationships in our times. But there is much more. Most notably, a refreshing irony prevents the hardened art house pundit from wallowing in nostalgia and the metaphysics of 'portentous messages'. Emphasis is very much on the 'investigation' suggested by the title rather than possible meanings to be derived from it. Everything in the film comes in twos: two women from different social and sexual backgrounds, two films about to be made, two extraordinary key sequences - the first enshrouded in thick fog, the other in the desolation of the Venetian lagoon. In the end the central character chooses not to make his film about the 'ideal woman' but to lose himself in a space oddity with skull-like spacecrafts journeying towards the sun. Probably not a sign of Spielbergian things to come from Antonioni - more a subdued admission from the 'apostle of incommunicability' that the best place for alienation these days is in megabuck fantasies.Author: DR
Cast & crew
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Producer: Giorgio Nocella, Antonio Macri
Cast: Tomas Milian, Daniela Silverio, Christine Boisson, Sandra Monteleoni, Giampaolo Saccarola, Marcel Bozzuffi full cast
Duration: 131 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now