Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni
Starring: Tomás Milián, Daniela Silverio, Christine Boisson, Veronica Lazar
8½ meets Vertigo in
Identification of a Woman, Michelangelo Antonioni's final solo feature. Like Fellini's
film it features a filmmaker struggling with a creative block, and from
Hitchcock's thriller it takes the loss of a woman and a subsequent
search to find her.
The woman is Mavi (Daniela Silverio), a young model and wannabe
actress who calls her gynaecologist only for the phone to be answered by
the doctor's brother, director Niccolo (Tomás Milián). Crossing
all sorts of boundaries, Niccolo tracks Mavi down and the pair begin
dating. Niccolo is lovestruck but Mavi seems distant, and she may well
view the relationship as nothing more than a business transaction.
Introduced to Mavi's high society friends, the director is treated like
a coalman who refused to use the tradesman's entrance. There's a very
effective scene in which Niccolo is shunned by an assortment of snobs at
a party, but I couldn't figure out why they would take this attitude to
a filmmaker.
There aren't many great scenes in this weaker entry in Antonioni's
filmography but a sequence on a road shrouded in fog is up there with
his best work. The mist transforms an Italian highway into a vision of
hell straight out of a Fulci movie as Mavi disappears into the fog. She
turns up but subsequently vanishes the following morning.
Enter the second of Niccolo's young lovers. Ida (Christine Boisson) is an actress too, but far more down to earth than Mavi, and
considerably more attractive. She becomes a curious mix of both Kim
Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes' characters from Vertigo as
Niccolo uses her to fill the void left by Mavi's absence. Realising she
can't replace Mavi, Ida unselfishly sets about helping Niccolo to find
her.
As you would expect from an Antonioni movie,
Identification of a Woman takes itself very seriously.
It's not so easy for the viewer to take it so seriously, as it boasts
the sort of premise that was fuelling Gene Wilder and Dudley Moore
comedies during this period. Movies like 10 and
The Woman in Red were very aware of how pathetic their
protagonists' mid-life crises were, but Antonioni treats Niccolo's
obsession with a woman half his age with a level of earnestness that
borders on the ridiculous. The soundtrack, curated by Ultravox's
John Foxx, consists of moody post-New Wave electronic tunes that
further add to the morose tone. It will be interesting to see how the
idea of a filmmaker using his position to bed budding starlets plays to
a 2022 audience introduced to Antonioni's film through this
reissue.
