“Raise the Red Lantern” - Zhang Yimou (1991)

Raise the Red Lantern (Dà Hóng Dēnglóng Gāogāo Guà, 1991) was director Zhang Yimou’s fourth feature film, coming right after his outstanding breakthrough feature, Ju Dou (1990) and again starring Gong Li. The story of the film, which depicts the travails of a concubine who has just joined the household of a rich family in northern China during the 1920s, is based on the 1990 novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong. Naturally, much of the critical comment about the film has concerned the status of women in traditional Chinese society and the degree to which the circumstances shown in the film reflect larger social and political issues. But what makes the film peculiarly attractive, almost hypnotically so, seems to lie elsewhere – not on the social plane, but on another, deeper, level.

This additional dimension arises from Zhang Yimou’s uniquely expressionistic visual style, which of course emphasizes color, but actually makes use of all aspects of the cinematic medium. In this connection the filmmaker I would most closely compare to Zhang Yimou is Michelangelo Antonioni. Both Zhang and Antonioni emphasize the emotive influence that the physical (i.e. visually observable) environment has on the characters and the story, and they are both known first to choose the physical settings for their films and then build their stories around them. Although Antonioni characteristically employed more camera movement than Zhang does to accentuate this effect, they both achieve an existential mood that permeates the events on display. As a result, although the films of both of them may touch on the social sphere somewhat, they ultimately reach a more profound level that suggests the universal struggles of the individual soul in a heartless and uncaring cosmos.

There is a further key aspect associated with Zhang Yimou’s style of this period, almost an essential aspect of it, that must be mentioned – the magnetic performances of his lead actress, Gong Li. I will discuss her connection with Zhang Yimou’s style, and the degree to which her presence is crucial, further on in this review. In the matter of Zhang’s cinematic style, Raise the Red Lantern is particularly interesting, because its purely visual stylistic virtues manage to overcome its weaknesses in other areas.

At the beginning of the story, the father of 19-year-old Songlian (Gong Li) has just died, and the loss of his income has left the family in such financial straits that her stepmother insists that she drop out of college and accept an arranged marriage. Presumably it must have been a considerable achievement for a woman from a non-wealthy family to have been studying at a college, and Songlian is obviously disconsolate at being forced to abandon everything for an arranged marriage. Expressing passive resignation to her materialistic stepmother’s wishes, she says a rich man might as well be selected. When she is warned that a wealthy husband would come at the price of her being only a concubine, she sighs, “isn’t that a woman’s fate?” And so her fate is sealed, and she is married into the wealthy Chen family.

The rest of the film takes place entirely inside the vast compound of the Chen family, where Songlian arrives to serve as the fourth mistress of the “Master”. All of Songlian’s material needs are met in this household; she lives in her own quarters and she has her own personal servant assigned to her. But she is essentially just a prisoner, a colorful bird in a gilded birdcage. The Chen household lives according to strictly enforced family rules and traditions which everyone must follow, servants and mistresses alike. Each mistress lives in her own little courtyard, and every evening the master has red lanterns raised round the courtyard of the mistress with whom he has chosen to spend the night. In preparation for the evening’s enjoyment, the chosen concubine is then given a luxurious foot massage by the senior servant. Being the youngest and freshest mistress, Songlian is immediately the master’s favorite, and the red lanterns are raised around her courtyard. But she soon learns that she will have to deal with an array of enemies within the household:

• Meishan, the pretty third mistress, is a former Peking opera singer and jealous of just having been supplanted as the master’s favorite. She is a spoiled, self-centered schemer who engages in all sorts of stratagems to both annoy Songlian and lure the master back to spending the nights with her.
• Yan’er, Songlian’s teenage servant, is also jealous of the new fourth mistress. Master Chen had earlier had sexual relations with her, and consequently she had hopeful delusions of being named the fourth mistress, herself. Now she proceeds to take out her resentment on the new fourth mistress. When she is not off in her dreamworld imagining the red lanterns being raised just for her own fanciful nights with the master, she acts spitefully and hurtfully towards Songlian in every way that she can.
• Zhuoyun, the second mistress, is warm and unassuming. She offers her friendship to Songlian and expresses her sympathies in connection with the scheming Meishan. But when Meishan later makes a peace with Songlian, she warns Songlian that Zhuoyun is deceptive and frankly even worse than she, herself, is: “she has a Buddha’s face, but a scorpion’s heart.” And indeed Songlian comes to discover the painful truth in Meishan’s warning.
• Yuru, the first wife, is much older and has a grown-up son. Although she has some ritual authority, she has long since been forgotten by the master, and it has been a long time since the red lanterns have been raised for her.

In this artificial and cloistered world Songlian finds herself playing the only game available: competing for the master’s selection. There is no love on the part of any of the parties, only the gratification that comes from winning the game. And there’s more to it than just winning that master’s attentions. It becomes clear to Songlian quickly enough that the servants only show real respect to the master’s current favorite mistress, the one for whom the red lanterns are being raised every night. The lower-ranking mistresses are essentially ignored. as a consequence In this microcosm, Master Chen is not only the law, but also the source of all values. Everything revolves around his whims. Songlian even hears that if a mistress ever proves to be unfaithful to the master, she is secretly hanged in a garret on the roof. And that horrifying prospect turns out to be more than just a rumor, as later events transpire to demonstrate.

Despite the master’s central importance to the governance and operation of the Chen household, though, he is rarely seen in the film, and when he appears, it is only in the background or in the distance. But the shadow he casts is perhaps more forceful than the real figure’s presence. Zhang Yimou’s claustrophobic visual focus is entirely on the machinations involving the women: the mistresses and the servants, and how they behave towards each other.

As the story progresses and the fourth-mistress Songlian struggles to hold her ground with respect to the other mistresses, she becomes increasingly frustrated – not only with how she is treated, but with the pointlessness of the whole enterprise. Her only options, it seems, are to serve as nothing more than either a utilized or a discarded garment for the master. Eventually the inevitable tragedies ensue. Songlian turns out to be unwittingly the cause of successive catastrophes which shatter others and ultimately take the ultimate toll on her own mind. She ends not only totally without hope, but deranged, as well.

Overall, the narrative of Raise the Red Lantern presents a relentlessly grim destruction of the human soul. From a cinematic and narrative perspective, the focalization is almost entirely with Songlian, but not exclusively so. Many of the shot perspectives are not strictly from the point of view of Songlia, but from the point of view of an some unseen, nosey viewer who is a privileged witness to her destruction. But in spite of the continuing grim picture presented in the film, it is nevertheless also continuously fascinating, as the viewer follows the superficially courteous, but insidious, ways in which the various women treat each other. In this respect it’s interesting to compare and contrast the attention to the women's circle in this film with Antonioni’s similarly women-focused story, Le Amiche. Both films concern a circle of upperclass women and the ways they use and abuse each other in seemingly civilized fashion. But the women are cast in vastly different circumstances -- Antonioni’s women in Le Amiche are situated in greatly different circumstances than are Zhang Yimou’s in Raise the Red Lantern. For instance Le Amiche is set in postwar Italy, where new opportunities were appearing, and the women were almost reveling in, and at the same time struggling to come to terms with, the new freedoms available to them. In Raise the Red Lantern, on the other hand, the lives of the women are completely circumscribed by oppressive, time-worn rules and Confucian traditions. Instead of exploring new freedoms, these women are struggling to find space for even the smallest bits of autonomy that is available to them.

In this context (of women and their relationships) we come back to the subject of Gong Li and the significant role she plays in all this. To me she is something of an enigma. While many Western viewers regard her as very beautiful, I find it interesting that none of my Chinese friends and acquaintances have ever identified her as alluring or good-looking. She is, at best, "OK" to them, but not particularly special. Of course what is beautiful is a matter of individual tastes, but the contrast along ethnocultural lines is striking. It seems that her appearance and manner resonate with some groups and not at all with others. First of all we might observe that she is not at all delicate like a flower, and she is not pretty like a picture. Instead, her face and demeanor suggest action, along with latent passions. And that, I suppose is the secret behind the magnetism that she brings to the screen for some people. It is this smoldering passion, seemingly ready to erupt at any time (though it never really does), that energizes Zhang Yimou’s visual spectacles. Her talent, then, is not simply a matter of playing a role and making it believable. In fact, when I revisit her films, I am not even confidant that her general acting is particularly skilled or convincing. Her displays of petulance in Raise the Red Lantern seem forced and artificial, and her reactions to Zhuoyun and Yan’er do not seem as spontaneous as they should be. When I compare her with Zhang Yimou’s more recent leading lady, Zhang Ziyi, it is the latter actress who may have more subtlety of expression and feeling. But somehow the hypnotic charm of Gong Li’s emotive glances overcomes any other limitations and permeates the scene. In this sense she reminds me of Claudia Cardinale. Her face and gestures are enough on their own to connote some mysterious longings for something unspoken, an emotion that frequently lies below the surface in Zhang Yimou’s films.

In Raise the Red Lantern that very expressive yearning for something more in life, something beyond the present circumstances, is what dominates the visual expression. The plot is not exceptional, and even the acting is somewhat uneven. But the entire cinematic experience is a visceral representation and demonstration of the metaphor of the "fly in the fly bottle". And the final images of the film display that fly trapped inside a red lantern. For whatever weaknesses it may have, Raise the Red Lantern, graced by Gong Li’s vivacious presence, is everlastingly memorable for making us linger on and wonder at that metaphorical image.
★★★★

"The Ghost Ship" - Val Lewton (directed by Mark Robson, 1943)

The Ghost Ship was the fifth successive low-budget “horror” film produced by Val Lewton in a short space of time, following The Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943), and The Seventh Victim (1943). This was 29-year-old Mark Robson’s second directorial outing, coming immediately after his inaugural effort, The Seventh Victim. Like all of Lewton’s films, the horror element does not arise from any explicitly established supernatural element, but comes from the dark, unfathomable recesses of the human mind. And because of this, even though The Ghost Ship, like most of Lewton’s productions, has an exotic setting well beyond the shadows of the big-city streets, I would still classify it with the others as a film noir.

The story is set on a merchant ship, Altair, on which young marine officer Tom Merriam has just been given his first assignment as third officer to Captain Will Stone. Though Merriam is cheerful and optimistic, the prospects look ominous from the outset. Before boarding, Merriam hears a blind street singer comment that the ship is cursed, and then he meets a spooky-looking mute shipmate, Finn, whose voice-over comments predict that there will be deaths on the upcoming voyage. And like all of Lewton’s films, the low-key lighting, even in bright daylight, creates shadows and darkness that persistently permeate the mood.

Merriam is warmly welcomed by the friendly, civilized Captain Stone, who says he chose Merriam as third-mate, because he thinks they share a common background and can become close companions. Merriam is suitably impressed, but he soon discovers that the mild-mannered captain is in fact a rigid authoritarian. There is also some other disquieting news. When Merriam first enters the third mate’s cabin, he learns that his predecessor had only recently died from violent convulsions. Then another crew member is found dead. Maybe the ship really is cursed.

When another crew member complains that the ship should dock at the next port to fill out the crew, Captain Stone becomes angry at the insubordination and secretly causes the poor fellow to die in an accident. But Merriam discovers what happened, accuses the captain of murder, and files a formal protest at the ship’s next port of call, San Sebastian (a name of a fictitious Carribean port also used in I Walked With a Zombie). A hearing is held, but the crew, mindful of their lowly status and fearful of the captain’s malice, refuse to back up Merriam, and the case is dropped.

Assuming that he has been fired, Merriam disembarks from the ship, but he gets accidentally knocked out in a brawl and brought back on board the Altair as it sets out to sea. Now trapped with a vengeful, deranged captain, and a fearful crew that refuses even to talk to him, Merriam knows that he is a clay pigeon awaiting a fatal attack. His fears are multiplied when he discovers that the locks have been removed from his sleeping quarters cabin door and window.

When the ship’s radio operator, Sparks, is ordered to respond falsely to a query from the San Sebastian office about whether Merriam is on board, he finally sees Captain Stone’s perfidy and goes to show Merriam the untruthful response message. But Sparks was observed by Stone emerging from that meeting, and shortly thereafter he, too, is reported dead of an “accident”. Upon hearing this, Merriam assaults Stone, but he is restrained by the crew and ordered to be bound and gagged in his bunk and then sedated. Things are looking pretty grim for Merriam at this point.

However, the untruthful radio message is discovered by Finn and is passed to others. Meanwhile Captain Stone grabs a knife and goes to finish off Merriam, who is still bound and gagged in his bunk and powerless to defend himself. But Stone is caught in the act by Finn, and they engage in a ferocious fight, before Finn finally stabs Stone with his own knife.

As is customary with Lewton’s films, the acting in The Ghost Ship is emphatic and almost stereotyped. While this would be a drawback in a more conventional drama, it plays satisfactorily in the present fast-paced and film noir circumstances. One welcome contributor is Sir Lancelot, the famous calypso singer, who plays a ship’s crew member and who had also appeared effectively in I Walked With a Zombie.

On the surface, the story and film seem pretty routine, but there are some interesting elements that make it more memorable than one might have expected. Of particular significance are the five atmospheric scenes, almost set-pieces, that serve as anchoring points for the narrative and help establish lasting mental images in the viewer’s mind.

1. Early on, there is a scene of a very heavy hoist hook on the ship that swings about dangerously, because it has not been tethered. The camera work and editing are excellent here, and the rough, dynamic conditions on board the ship are well presented by this single scene. The outcome of this scene is that it emphasizes the disconnect between Captain Stone’s neatnik fussiness and the realities of responsible ship management.
2. Later, Captain Stone is called upon to perform an emergency appendectomy that is to be guided by remote medical advice provided over the ship’s radio. Stone freezes at the critical moment, and Merriam has to take over. The tension is built up in the scene by excellent shifting between various close-ups. Similar to a scene in which Captain Queeg panics inThe Caine Mutiny, this scene calls into question Stone’s professional equanimity and mental stability.
3. The scene in which the crew member is buried and crushed by the heavy anchor chain is dynamic and brutal, with fast cuts between the panicking crew member and the oblivious sailors on deck feeding more chain into the chain portal. Stone’s calm when he locks the chain cabin door, thereby dooming the crew member, establishes Stone as a cold-blooded murderer.
4. Still later, after Merriam had been unwittingly brought back to the departing ship following his failed complaint about Stone at the San Sebastian office, he is depicted in his cabin fearfully concerned that Stone might attack him in the night. Lewton’s films often have scenes like this in which the protagonist is alone and fearful of danger from the darkness. The tension is built up such that any stray noise can elicit a panicked alarm. In this case claustrophobia is added to the mix, as Merriam tries ineffectually to find a way of booby-trapping the cabin entrance. This eerie scene emphasizes Merriam’s precarious circumstances and helplessness.
5. The final life-and-death struggle in Merriam’s cabin between the mute, Finn, and Stone is violent and climactic. Since it takes place in near darkness, the viewer struggles to make out who has the upper hand. Merriam, bound and gagged to his bunk, can only look on helplessly at what seems to be a mismatch favouring Stone. Again, like the other four scenes above, the violence and dynamic editing ensure that the tension is at the highest level.

Another aspect of the film that sticks in the memory concerns the seemingly simplistic theme of authority. The issue here, of course, is not just authority, but absolute authority. On first consideration, the theme appears to be trivial and overdone in the film, but I am reminded of remarks made to me by a well-known academic about authority in another context. He was speaking of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and my friend commented that such absolute power can only drive a person to madness. We tend to think of ruthless autocrats, such as Stalin, as always having been essentially psychopathic. But my friend argued that the possession of absolute authority actually drives a person mad, even if he didn’t start that way. On reflection, I wonder if there may be some truth to his comments. It would seem that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini was not such a murderous and ruthless dictator in his earlier days, but he became so towards the end, ordering undocumented mass executions of civilians. And now Khamanei shows similar wilful disregard for human values as the current Iranian Supreme Leader. Lord Acton’s dictum that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” should perhaps be amended to read, “... and absolute power drives you insane”.

In The Ghost Ship Captain Stone may have similarly been driven over the edge by awareness of his absolute authority of life and death over his crew. On a ship, a captain had, by rights, absolute authority and could exercise it without restraint. When the Altair stops in the port of San Sebastian and Stone meets his longtime friend, Charles, and his longtime lover, Ellen, it is evident that he is considered to be a civilized and even lovable human being. But at that time he confessed to Ellen his feelings that something was hounding his peace of mind and that he needed to work out his psychological problems. In this case a civilized, but not entirely stable, mind was not able to deal with the issues of boundless authority.

Absolute authority, of course, can have devastating consequences when applied to larger political scales. In fact over much of Chinese history, at least since the Song dynasty, it could be said that the Chinese emperor did have such absolute autocratic authority, and this came to accepted in Chinese society. At times the only allowable “expressions” of restraint were the natural occurrences of earthquakes and floods, which were interpreted to represent a withdrawal of “Heaven’s Mandate”. Only God was allowed to comment. At the time of the making of The Ghost Ship, the US was engaged in a world war with a Nazi regime whose leader also espoused such absolute authority. At the same time there were questions at home about how much extra authority the US government could reasonably assume in wartime in order to defeat the enemy. Was the seizure of absolute authority necessary to defeat such a tyrant? The argument made in this film seems to be that, even in military situations, the exercise of absolute authority should be restrained. It will inevitably lead to deranged decision-making.

Another theme of interest to some critics is the suggestion of homoerotic elements to the film. Stone seems unable to consummate his “love” for Ellen, and he seems to have expressed more warmth for Merriam early on than he later did for Ellen. And in fact Ellen does warn Merriam in a motherly fashion at one point not to live exclusively among men and to seek the company of women (which he does at the film’s end). However, I think the psychoanalytic analyses and interests in this area are exaggerated and should not be overly stressed.

The Ghost Ship ends rather abruptly, without the usual moralizing that would wrap up many melodramas. In the closing shots we simply see Merriam disembarking back at San Pedro and meeting a young lady who had been recommended to him by Ellen. He has been returned to civilization.
★★★

“House of Flying Daggers” - Zhang Yimou (2004)

Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (Shí Miàn Mái Fú, 2004) was his second successive foray, following Hero (Yi-ng Xióng, 2002), into the Chinese wuxia martial arts genre popularized by Hong Kong filmmakers. This turn to wuxia was a dramatic shift from Zhang’s earlier, highly artistic and dramatic work, and though it brought him greater exposure and commercial success (as did a similar turn undertaken by Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee), it represented a considerable compromise of Zhang Yimou’s artistic virtues.

Although the wuxia films, with their absurd wire-fu action, are mostly seen as escapist fantasies, Zhang’s preceding epic, Hero (which is set some 2200 years ago during the reign of King Ying Zheng, later Emperor Qin Shi Huang), carried with it an additional social and political undercurrent that actually argued against heroic acts of defiance: it is better to put up with a tyrant than to overthrow him and risk sowing the seeds of disunity. Though this message was blissfully overlooked by many viewers, it was rejected by some reviewers, including this one. House of Flying Daggers steers clear of such political commentary and, even with less than half of Hero's budget, focuses more on the action. It, too, is set in historical times, but the tone is lighter (although bloodier), and the emphasis is more on romantic relationships involving the big box-office stars who appear in the film: Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Zhang Ziyi.

The story is set in 859 AD at the close of the Tang dynasty, when government control had largely collapsed and rebel groups had risen in various quarters of China. The image of Robin-Hood-like rebel gangs has long been popular in Chinese – since at least as far back as the 14th century novel Water Margin (Shuĭhŭ Zhuàn, aka Outlaws of the Marsh and All Men Are Brothers). In this film the rebel gang is the Flying Daggers, which has set itself in opposition to the local government. The story has four main sections:

1. The Peony Pavilion.
   At the outset, two local region police captains, Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who had recently killed the leader of the Flying Daggers, have now been assigned to kill the new leader within ten days. They decide to investigate a blind woman, Mei (Zhang Ziyi), who is working at a local brothel, the Peony Pavilion, but who they believe is actually the daughter of the late leader of the Flying Daggers and is now a spy. After getting permission from the house matron Yee to watching the blind girl dance, they arrest Mei and take her into custody.
2. On the Road.
   Jin and Leo then arrange a phony jail breakout for Mei in hopes of following her and finding the hideout of the Flying Daggers. Mei escapes to the forest, and Jin, pretending to be a rebel sympathizer, joins her company in the hopes that he can seduce her and learn secrets about the group. Leo and government troops follow the pair at a distance, and they even arrange a phony attack that is beaten back by Jin in order to make things look more authentic to Mei. But after an ensuing attack turns out to be almost deadly, Jin learns from Leo that a ruthless government general has taken over the pursuit from Leo, and this general is willing to sacrifice Jin and Mei, as long as he can find the rebel hideout. Meanwhile Jin and Mei seem to be falling in love, which was not according to plan. When a third ferocious government attack appears to doom Jin and Mei, the Flying Daggers, themselves, show up and rescue them in the nick of time.
3. In the House of the Flying Daggers.
   At this point many previous deceptions are revealed. Mei is not really blind and is not the daughter of the old leader, but is instead a skilled Flying Dagger warrior. The Peony Pavilion house matron, Yee, turns out to be the local Flying Dagger commander. And Leo turns out to have been a spy for the Flying Daggers all along and has been Mei’s lover. Thus we now see a jealous love triangle between Jin and Leo, both competing for Mei. Yee orders Mei to take Jin away and kill him, but she cannot do it. Alone in the forest, they make love. Jin beseeches her to run away with him to freedom, but her loyalties to Leo and to the Flying Daggers’ cause hold her back. She tells him to go without her, and he rides away.
4. The Long Good-bye.
   After Jin’s departure, Mei has second thoughts and decides to follow him. Seeing her betrayal from a distance, Leo slings a pair of flying daggers at Mei, who is able to fend off one of them, but is apparently mortally wounded by the other. Jim decides to come back for Mei, and seeing her dying, he fights with Leo. Mei, still alive, stands up and tries to prevent Leo from finishing off Jin. If she pulls the dagger out of her chest to defend Jin, her wound will gush blood and she will die immediately. So the three of them, with life and death hanging in the balance, face each other in an open field, physically mirroring their tortured love triangle. The final act of the tragedy then plays itself out.

Like Hero, House of Flying Daggers, even with a much smaller budget, excels in the area of cinematography. And as with many of Zhang Yimou’s films, the use of color as a motif and as an expressionistic element is stunning. Xiaoding Zhao, who had been the camera operator behind cinematographer Christopher Doyle in Hero, takes over the reins and is the cinematographer on this occasion, and the resulting work was nominated for an Oscar in 2004. Zhao continued on to be Zhang Yimou’s cinematographer for his next two films, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005) and Curse of the Golden Flower (Mănchéng Jìndài Huángjīnjiă, 2006).

Certainly the cinematographic talents of the Zhang and Zhao are the principal crowd-pleasing resources here, and they are on full display over five elaborate scenes that take up fully one-third of the screen time of the film:

• There is a spectacular dance in Section 1 involving Zhang Ziyi playing the “echo game”, which involves her magically flinging her veil at a circular set of drums.
• There are three elaborate fight scenes in Section 2, each of which is creatively presented. The most spectacular is the third one, involving an “aerial” attack from government commandos swinging about in the trees.
• The final fight in Section 4 between Jin and Leo is punctuated by a violent snow storm that appears during the course of the action (the snow storm on the shooting location was unexpected, but Zhang Yimou decided to incorporate it into the scene).

One aspect of the cinematography that represents an improvement over Hero is in the area of the wuxia sword fights, where the “wire-fu” acrobatics have been reined in somewhat. Of course there are still inhumanly impossible dagger-throwing feats accomplished by the main characters. But at least these actions, as improbable as they are, do not so obviously violate the fundamental laws of physics, as they do in Hero and other Hong Kong wire-fu films. There is a payoff even to this modicum of directorial restraint, because though the fight scenes here are still unbelievable, they are at least not so ludicrously physically impossible as to distance the viewer from any possible vicarious involvement.

But outside the scope of the superb cinematography, other aspects of House of Flying Daggers have not fared so well. One problematic area is the narrative, itself. This film features the typical combination of an action-oriented thread and a relationship-oriented thread to the plot. The action-oriented thread ostensibly concerns the cause of the Flying Dagger rebels against a presumed corrupt government. But this thread gradually fades away to nothing and seems to have been almost forgotten by the story’s end. At the close of the film, the government troops are supposed to be advancing on to the Flying Daggers hideout. Although, Yee has suggested that the Flying Daggers have organized to trap them, we never find out. The whole storyline on this front has simply been abandoned.

A further narrative drawback is the operatic extravagance of Section 4 of the film. Dramatically, this unbearably long scene almost kills the film and ultimately evokes more ennui than tragedy. It should have been something of a coda, at best, but it goes on for twenty minutes and seems interminable. And the display of Leo’s enraged jealousy and willingness to kill Mei has not been properly motivated, which renders his character repugnant.

So this leaves us only with the relationship thread. Zhang Yimou has admitted that the main theme of this film centered around people who were willing to abandon everything for love [1]. Unfortunately, there is no romantic chemistry developed along this line. The film features four separate dramatic lovemaking attempts involving Mei (only the last one of which goes to completion), but none of them is really convincing, despite good performing by Zhang Ziyi in these scenes. In addition the rapidity with which Mei falls for Jin is hard to believe and is not well motivated. The main problem, though, boils down essentially to the performance of Takeshi Kaneshiro, who was likeable in Red Cliff (Chi Bi, 2008), but doesn’t match up well with what is needed in this film. His portrayal of a lusty vagabond lover lacks even remote credibility, and the same could be said for the sincerity of his passions for Mei. Kaneshiro’s overall performance may actually reflect some ambivalence on Zhang Yimou’s part concerning the degree to which he wanted this film to be essentially a cartoon, with ludicrous, over-the-top performances, as opposed to one with more straight-up roles. Actually, within the narrow narrative confines available to them, both Andy Lau and Zhang Ziyi give good and reasonably believable portrayals of their characters (and Zhang Ziyi has the opportunity to display her dance background and to sing the principal song in the film). But Takeshi Kaneshiro is just a bit too unbelievable, even for this fantasy. Samurai Jack he is not.

Further considering the relationship angle, it is worth noting that a key subtext to this theme is the idea of personal deception, or perhaps we should say, human authenticity. All of the principal characters, Jim, Leo, Mei, and Yee, are constantly dissembling and pretending to be people they are not:

• Yee is variously presented as a brothel matron, the leader of the Flying Daggers, and then merely a commander of the Flying Daggers.
• Mei is variously a blind dancer, the daughter of Flying Daggers leader, and a warrior of the Flying Daggers.
• Jin is variously a police captain, a renegade recruit for the Flying Daggers, and a carefree wanderer beholden to noone.
• Leo is variously a police captain and a spy for the Flying Daggers.

Since the focalization of the film is primarily that of Jin, the viewer is not fooled by Jin’s deceptions, but is successively fooled by all the others. Normally, the viewer’s sympathies would tend to be aligned with the principally focalized character in a film, i.e. Jin. But in this film our empathy and sympathies turn away from him and go to Mei, thanks to Zhang Ziyi’s sympathetic portrayal of that character. In any case the film reminds us that however convenient they can be in the short run, deceptions can also prove to be fatal, and that is what happens in the final stroke of the film..

On balance we have to say the House of Flying Daggers is pretty lightweight fare for Zhang Yimou. He admitted so, himself, when he remarked [2]

“To me they’re [his two wuxia films] just pure entertainment. I expected more discussions of my previous work, most of which is artistic and has a deeper subject matter, a lot of humanity – whereas these two are just commercial.”

Taken on it’s own escapist terms, House of Flying Daggers has its moments, mostly when Zhang Ziyi is on screen, and it is indeed superior to Hero. But this kind of film, profitable though it may be, is not best suited for displaying Zhang Yimou’s great artistic strengths. To see how wonderfully he engages all aspects of the film medium to portray profound human experiences, you need to look elsewhere in his cinematic oeuvre.
★★½

Notes:

1. In fact this theme contrasts so strikingly with “Hero”, which advocated the sacrifice of all personal values for the sake of social unity, that one might suspect Zhang was reacting to the critical reception of that film. But he has claimed (see [2]) that the scenarios of both Hero and House of Flying Daggers were written at the same time. In any case, the abandonment of the action plot is evidently intentional.
2. Nick Bradshaw, “Zhang Yimou on House of Flying Daggers”, Timeout Film Guide, Fourteenth Edition (2006), p. 526.

“D.O.A.” - Rudolph Maté (1950)

Although it was only a B-movie, with second line performers and a low budget, D.O.A. (1950) still stacks up today as one of the truly classic films noir. The reason for its lasting appeal can be attributed to the way D.O.A. plumbs the extreme depths of the film noir aesthetic. To a certain extent we could say that it exposes the dark horror of this netherworld like almost no other film. D.O.A. was directed by Rudolph Maté, who had established himself over the years as a distinguished cinematographer and had worked behind the camera on three of Carl Dreyer’s classic, highly atmospheric films: Michael (1924), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and Vampyr (1932). The star of the film, Edmund O’Brien, was no stranger to the film noir genre, having appeared earlier in The Killers (1946) and White Heat (1949). For all their successes on other film sets, though, D.O.A. was definitely the high-water mark for the careers of both men.

Concerning the nature of film noir, it must be admitted that it has always been difficult to establish a consensus concerning what are the precise boundaries of the film noir genre and what constitutes its essence. But we are all familiar with the general cinematic style and the usual themes of these movies. They often involve characters with dubious pasts and doomed expectations, struggling to make their way in an underworld commonly inhabited by unprincipled, often criminal, characters. The settings are usually at night, the moral choices are murky, and the prospects are not at all hopeful. In short, these films reflect a world beset with despair – the characters are only hopeful of finding a small clearing in the dark, foreboding and unknowably savage jungle of the world. This is an existential despair, characteristic of the vast soulless metropolises of modern times – and the movies of the film noir genre have always struck a nerve of dark anxiety concerning this dark world that has been almost universal. D.O.A. delves into this existential nightmare by effectively employing two narrative schemes that metaphorically display these issues and evoke a feeling when we watch not only of fascination, but also dread.

One of the existential themes invoked in D.O.A. is the depiction of the ordinary middle-class man, living an orderly and well-regulated life, who is suddenly pulled into a maelstrom of confusion and personal threat that he must face and survive without assistance. This is the narrative scheme that was so brilliantly explored by Alfred Hitchcock in films like The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and North by Northwest (1959).

A second theme concerns how our existential despair is often associated with the question of how we are to make sense of our existence in a world in which we are all condemned to death. What meaningful acts can we undertake, if we are all invariably destined to physical destruction or deterioration? What is the point of any ephemeral enjoyment, if it will all end in nothingness? This is the kind of question that Kafka metaphorically asked and one that we all consider from time to time, knowing that we have at most 70 to 80 years of existence. In D.O.A. the time-scale is drastically foreshortened: the principal character is informed early on by doctors that he has only one or two days left to live. Initially when he is confronted with this reality, the character feels utter despair. But he soon learns that he has been effectively murdered, and with that realization, a most primitive and human emotion surges up in him – like Joseph K, he at least wants to know why. “Why me?,” he asks. And D.O.A. very effectively puts the rest of us in his shoes.

The film opens, even as the opening credits are rolling, with an extended tracking shot following a man from the rear who resolutely enters the San Francisco police station and reports to the homicide division that a murder was committed the previous night. When they ask, “who was murdered?”, the man answers, “I was.” He has arrived at the police station D.O.A., “dead on arrival”. Then the man begins to tell his story, and the rest of the film recounts the man’s story as a flashback.

As the flashback story is told, the storytelling takes three drastic swerves which separate the narrative into three separate schematic moods. Though these wild changes of direction seem rather awkward, they do serve to add to the film’s sense of bizarre disorientation. As the flashback story begins, we learn that it is all about an ordinary, middle-class accountant and notary public working in a small town in southeastern California, Frank Bigelow (O’Brien), who has decided to take one-week solo vacation in San Francisco in order to inject a little excitement in his apparently humdrum existence. This part of the film takes off like a romantic comedy, with Bigelow clearly showing a wayward interest in every young woman he meets, much to the consternation of his possessive and jealous private secretary and girlfriend, Paula (Pamela Britton). So the viewer is already faced with the first mood swerve and a severe conflict: the light, humorous tone associated with the brazenly flirtatious and smirking Bigelow is darkened by the viewer’s knowledge that this man will soon be reporting his own “murder”.

We will also learn that underlying the giddy tone of this early section is a deeper existential undertone. Bigelow goes to San Francisco, because he wants to see if he can find something more exciting in life than settling down in a middle-class cocoon tended by the smotheringly affectionate Paula. His life is just a bit too ordinary for him.

When he checks into his San Francisco hotel, Bigelow learns that the ever-watchful Paula has already called him there to check up on him and that the hotel is overrun with partying sales personnel attending a marketing convention. Eager to socialize with the women, he gets dragged by a group of partying sales people to a nightclub that is offering the latest jazz music. Suddenly the movie takes another drastic swerve, this time into strange expressionistic images of frenetically carousing customers drinking and jostling each other as they listen to the wild music played by the black jazz musicians. This entire sequence, one of the high points of the movie, is brilliantly evocative – like a sudden descent into a nightmare. We just know from the change of mood that something bad is going to happen here. In fact, we see that Bigelow’s drink is spiked by a mysterious stranger at the bar while Bigelow’s attention is attracted to a pretty woman. The woman agrees to meet him somewhere private, later, and knowing something about his later fate, we expect that this may be the dangerous encounter, but this appointed tryst turns out to be a red herring.

But now the film mise-en-scène takes its third and decisive swerve, as Bigelow wakes up the next morning in his hotel room. The dark intrigue has disappeared, and everything seems normal. Bigelow seems OK at first, but he complains about a queezy stomach and decides to visit a doctor. Medical tests are performed, and the doctors grimly inform Bigelow that he has been poisoned with “luminous toxin”, a slow-acting poison that will definitely kill within a couple of days. Now the riddle of the opening scene has been cleared up somewhat: someone has murdered Bigelow with this poison. The despairing Bigelow staggers back to his hotel room, whereupon his ever-attentive secretary Paula calls and informs him that a certain Eugene Phillips, who had been urgently trying to get hold of him the previous day, has just died. Bigelow seizes on this as possible clue to the mystery of his own condition. At this point in the narrative, 37 minutes into an 83-minutes film, the story moves into whodunit mode, as Bigelow heads for Los Angeles (the site of Phillips’s office) and sets about trying to find out in the last remaining hours of his life who has murdered him.

The rest of the story is full of action and sinister characters, as you might expect from this genre, and I won’t go into the details. There are a number of unsavory characters, mistaken identities, gangsters, double-crosses, murders, and gun fights. Bigelow, aware that he has only one day, desperately follows one lead after another into a web of intrigue. Yes, Phillips was killed by the bad guys. He had a mistress, who was involved somehow. His wife had her own lover, who was involved with the murder plot. Bigelow’s connection to all this concerned a bill of sale for some smuggled iridium that he had once notarized, which made him a witness to criminal activities and therefore a murder target.

This second half of the film, which is more of a conventional thriller, still has some uniquely existential features. While a typical film noir might be motivated primarily by revenge or “justice”, Bigelow seems to be motivated by something else – why did all this happen?. Why would anyone want to murder such an essentially innocent man as himself? In addition, this part is continuously interleaved with loving phone calls from Paula to Frank, who never informs her about his impending death. But the contrast between the horrors of the inhuman, fatal world that is about to devour him and the loving and sentimental affection of Paula is dramatic. She represents the refuge that Frank wanted to abandon. He ultimately realizes that the human connection, her finally-realized unconditional love for him, is the one, true value in this world that makes life meaningful.

Cinematically, there are three sequences in the film that are superbly executed by Maté and his cinematographer, Ernest Laszlo. One I have already mentioned – the wild, almost demonic atmosphere at the nightclub early on. This features many expressionistic closeups (closeups are used effectively throughout this film). Another outstanding sequence is the breathtaking section of the film when Bigelow is about to be bumped off by one of the gangster’s thugs, Chester. A third high-tension sequence is when Bigelow is again trying to escape the gangster’s henchmen (after the Chester sequence), and he jumps onto a bus, only to observe that the gangsters are in hot pursuit in a following car. The irony here is that in these sequences, Bigelow is desperately trying to avoid being killed just so that he can live a few more hours and possibly understand why he was murdered and by whom. In the “grand scheme of things”, those extra hours are presumably meaningless.

One seriously detracting element in D.O.A., however, is Dmitri Tiomkin’s loud and intrusively trashy musical score. Even giving allowance for the film conventions of this period, the musical score is unforgivable and an irritation all the way through the film.

On the other hand, the acting throughout is dynamic, vigorous, and violent – including that of O’Brien, who is very good in an uncharacteristic role. The relatively brief role of Chester, played by Neville Brand, is a memorable highlight, because we see on display one of the all-time great out-of-control and sadistic psychopaths in cinematic history. Beverly Garland, who would later star in 1950s TV roles, is excellent as a devious secretary to the late Eugene Phillips. And Pamela Britton is just right as the star-crossed Paula. Her Midwestern US familiarity at first threatens to be annoying, but she ultimately wins you over, just as she wins Bigelow over.

Does Bigelow get an answer to his question in the end? Do we? You’ll have to see this excellent film to find out.
★★★½ 

“Le Amiche” - Michelangelo (1955)

A woman friend of mine once insightfully remarked that men show much more compassion and empathy for other men than women do for other women. She claimed that the congenial smiles among a group of women may often belie far less generous feelings. This challenging subject territory – how women see themselves and how they see each other – is what Michelangelo Antonioni explores in his fourth feature film, Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955). Although the film is not so well known today and appeared before Antonioni came to international prominence, Le Amiche features many of the themes and cinematic techniques that characterized Antonioni’s great works that came later. In fact it displays some of Antonioni’s innovative storytelling methods on a narrative canvas that was more complex than that of his later works. Here Antonioni traces the evolving and mutually influencing relationships among a group of young women friends who are all trying to answer the same question for themselves: what do they really want out of life?

People who have the time and wherewithal to obsess about these questions are usually not from the working-class milieu that had interested Antonioni’s Neorealist contemporaries, and Le Amiche is no exception to that observation – the principal characters are all relatively privileged in terms of material welfare. So it was probably inevitable that the examination of life in this social stratum would lead critics concerned with social realism and political issues to condemn Antonioni’s work as only of interest to spoiled, self-pitying intellectuals. But we should not so quickly make such dismissals. The issues that concern the characters in Le Amiche are those that concern us all in one way or another.

The serpentine narrative structure of Le Amiche doesn’t have the straightforward four- or five-act structure characteristic of many stories of this length. In fact because of the sinuous ways that the various narrative threads interleave and overlap, it is best first to list the principal characters. The five girlfriends, who range from very attractive to beautiful, are listed in order of importance:

• Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) is a career woman from Rome who has come to Turin to open up a fashion salon branch for the main company. She joins the social circle of the girlfriends and develops a romantic interest in Carlo.
• Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer) is a sensitive young woman for whom life holds no meaning without romance. She is romantically interested in Lorenzo.
• Momina (Yvonne Furneaux) is recently separated from her wealthy husband (who is never seen in the film) and is concerned about the welfare of her “best friend”, Rosetta. The most social (and therefore the most roleplaying) member of the girlfriends, she develops a romantic interest in Cesare.
• Nene (Valentina Cortese) is a ceramics artist who has recently married the portrait artist Lorenzo.
• Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani) is a beautiful and good-natured hedonist who is interested in enjoying the romantic attentions of men as much as possible.

The principal male characters involved with these women:

• Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti, who would later star in Antonioni’s L'Avventura), is a self-obsessed painter married to Nene who develops a romantic attachment with Rosetta.
• Cesare (Franco Fabrizi) is an interior architect doing contract work for Clelia and is a person who gets by on the basis of personal salesmanship and social carousing. He has romantic dalliances with Momina and Mariella.
• Carlo (Ettore Manni) is an earnest and taciturn construction foreman working under Cesare and is from the lower classes. He becomes romantically interested in Clelia.

The multiple intertwining story threads of Le Amiche make it comparable to Atom Egoyan’s 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, (but without that film story’s temporal dislocations), and so, like my review of that film, I trace here the narrative linkages in Le Amiche. But unlike Egoyan’s film, which challenges the viewer to make sense of the various disconnected threads, Antonioni’s film weaves the narrative threads together relatively seamlessly. The story begins with Clelia arriving in Turin, but the focalization of the film shifts back and forth between her, Rosetta, Momina, and Nene, and (briefly) Mariella, each of whom is at times seen in the exclusive company of her man of interest. Although I have divided the narrative into six main sections below, there are no clear demarcations that identify story transitions. Two of the six sections are superbly orchestrated social gatherings, during which all the characters interact according to their social identities within the group. Key to those scenes are the interwoven threads of the four principal girlfriends. It emerges that each of the women has a different attitude and commitment about love and what men may mean in their lives.

(1) Introduction (24 minutes). The focalization in this sequence is mainly with Clelia, but at times shifts to Momina.

(1a) Clelia arrives in her hotel room, but she learns that the person in the next room, Rosetta, has attempted suicide by taking an overdose. Momina arrives to visit Rosetta and meets Clelia, who informs her about Rosetta.
(1b) Clelia, in a mink coat, visits her salon site under construction and berates the workers for being behind schedule. There she meets Carlo, and later Cesare, who tries to soothe Clelia with sweet-talk, to no avail.
(1c) Momina and her friend Mariella, visit Rosetta at the hospital.
(1d) Clelia, at the salon, is still upset with Cesare’s work team.
(1e) Momina and Mariella visit a playboy Frank, accusing him (falsely, we later learn) of breaking Rosetta’s heart.
(1f) Momina visits Clelia's hotel room in hopes of finding out what telephone calls Rosetta may have made the previous night, prior to her attempted suicide.
(1g) Momina drags Clelia to an art exhibition, where her acquaintance, the artist Lorenzo, has a portrait of Rosetta on display. Momina, still fishing for a suspect, accuses Lorenzo of breaking Rosetta’s heart, but he denies it. Nene is also there.
(1h) Back at the salon site, Clelia, Cesare, and Carlo talk, and then Clelia has lunch with Carlo and gets to know him better. Cesare and Mariella show up and invite Clelia to a Sunday outing.

At this point all the characters have been briefly introduced. Momina is the social butterfly and ringmaster who is vicariously fascinated with Rosetta’s presumed love life. Clelia is the beautiful, but professionally committed, career woman.

(2) The Sunday Outing (10 minutes). This is one of two brilliant ensemble scenes in the film, which puts all the dynamics of their social circle on display in a continuous swirl of movement. All the characters introduced so far, including Rosetta, drive off to the beach, where they socialize together and engage in light chitchat. Cesare seems to be Momina’s boyfriend, but he sneaks off with Mariella and embraces her. Later, Mariella’s insensitive remarks upset Rosetta, and so Clelia arranges to accompany Rosetta by train back to Turin.

(3) Growing Attachments (16 minutes) The focalization shifts in this sequence between Clelia, Nene, Rosetta, and Momina.

(3a) Clelia and Rosetta on the train have a heartfelt talk. Rosetta at first says she attempted suicide because she was bored with life, but later confesses that, as Momina suspected, she was romantically heartbroken.
(3b) With the work at the salon now complete, Clelia expresses warm feelings for Carlo as he is about to depart, and they end up embracing.
(3c) Nene in her flat (a new focalization) is excited to learn from her agent that she has been invited to America to exhibit her work.
(3d) Rosetta (in another new focalization) walks by the river with Lorenzo and confesses her love for him. They embrace.
(3e) Back at the salon with Clelia, Carlo, and Cesare. Clelia and Carlo go out to look for furniture for the salon, after which Cesare phones his new paramour, Momina.
(3f) While looking for furniture, Clelia apologizes to Carlo for her earlier romantic indiscretion (kissing him). Carlo is put off and offended by this withdrawal, but tries to conceal his displeasure. They visit Clelia’s old working-class neighborhood (she had grown up in Turin), and she speculates how different she is now that her social status is much higher than it was then (and higher than Carlo’s is now).

(4) The Party at Momina’s (9 minutes). This is the second outstanding ensemble scene, with all the girlfriends together at a party at Momina’s place. Rosetta, now happy and full of enthusiasm, privately confesses to Momina and Clelia (out of Nene’s earshot) that she is in love with Lorenzo. Clelia is alarmed for Nene, but Momina's ruthless vicarious pleasure is overflowing. Cesare then shows up and interacts with Momina as the others depart.

(5) Rosetta and Nene (23 minutes).

(5a) Clelia, in command and full glory, has her salon opening.
(5b) Rosetta has a tryst with Lorenzo in Momina’s empty apartment.
(5c) Back with Clelia’s at her opening.
(5d) Rosetta walking on the street with Lorenzo. He is moody.
(5e) At the opening again. All the girlfriends and the men show up.
(5f) Nene, aware of her husband's wandering affections, has a private and frank discussion with Rosetta and agrees to leave the two of them together and go to America alone.
(5g) The salon opening wraps up, and they all decide to celebrate at a restaurant.
(5h) At the restaurant Cesare holds court with his supposedly witty banter, but when he jokes about Nene’s invitation to America, this turns out to be news to her resentful husband, Lorenzo, who is jealous of his wife’s success. Lorenzo punches Cesare and then angrily leaves the restaurant, with Rosetta tearfully chasing after him.
(5i) Outside the restaurant Rosetta tries to console Lorenzo and swears by her love for him, but he selfishly rejects her and walks away. Rosetta then tearfully runs off in the opposite direction.

6. Clelia, Momina, and Carlo (16 minutes).

(6a) There is an overhead shot of the city docks, where Rosetta’s body has been recovered. Her second suicide attempt has been successful.
(6b) Clelia, back at another show at her salon, is angry and distraught. When she sees Momina, she blows up at her in front of all the salon’s clientele, accusing Momina of having irresponsibly encouraged Rosetta’s liaison with Lorenzo for her own vicarious pleasure. On account of her selfish social games, Clelia screams, Momina is nothing less than Rosetta’s murderer.
(6c) Back in her room, Clelia gets a call from Carlo and arranges to meet him.
(6d) Nene, now back with Lorenzo, forgives him for his infidelity and swears to stay with him.
(6e) Clelia, leaving the hotel and assuming that she has been fired because of her outburst, runs into her boss in the lobby. Her boss surprises Clelia by recommending that she continue working for the company, but that she should return to Rome.
(6f) Carlo and Clelia together. She tells him that “if you and I were together, I am certain that one of us would be unhappy”. Countering her pessimism, he says, “I can’t imagine being unhappy at your side.” She still intends to return to Rome, and they make a date to meet at the bar at the train station prior to her departure.
(6g) Clelia waits for Carlo at the bar. Carlo arrives as the train is about to leave, but hides and watches her train depart in secret.

Despite all the intricate and carefully executed character and camera movements in the film, the acting is superb throughout, with subtle and meaningful eye-glances conveying hidden feelings at many moments. It is this fluid, multi-player mise-en-scène that sets Le Amiche apart, not only from most other films, but also from Antonioni’s other films, too. In his subsequent films, superb as they are, Antonioni continued his fluid, context-influenced cinematographic explorations, but narrowed his focus to a smaller cast of principal characters.

The girlfriends in Le Amiche are largely in control, or willing to take control, of their circumstances. In fact they seem to have more mastery of what is going on around them than the three principal men, who all seem to be in reaction mode, rather than in control of their fates. The girls, on the other hand, do largely what they want, and they are mindful of what their goals are. Looking at the girls individually and how they look at life reveals clear differences, though.

• Mariella is simply out for harmless self-gratification and wishes to exploit her good looks to get what she wants. She has little real empathy for any of the other people around her. If one lover disappears, she will simply find another.
• Rosetta is at the other end of the spectrum, ready to sacrifice herself for her beloved. If her beloved abandons her, then life has no meaning.
• Nene is devoted to her husband, but, unlike Mariella and Rosetta, can see situations from outside the concerns of her own short-term desires.
• Momina is in some ways quite typical of many of us today. She wants to be in on all the social games that people play, and she wants to play a leading role. But her sympathies extend only as far as doing what it takes to keep players in the game.
• Clelia is the most circumspect. Despite the assertive way that she operates in the workplace, her hesitancy in the social sphere leaves her uninvolved. She observes the social dynamics of the group of girlfriends, tries to help here and there, but is helpless to avert the emotional destruction that takes place, the blame for which she places on Momina.

Despite the virtues of the visual group-dynamics of the film, though, Le Amiche suffers from two significant narrative weaknesses:

• Although the film opens and closes with Clelia and follows her emotional journey throughout, the most compelling sequences in the film are those that trace Rosetta’s struggles. Rosetta’s death, sixteen minutes before the close of the film, brings that narrative thread to a close, and those remaining scenes that mostly follow Clelia and Carlo seem almost irrelevant in comparison. In The Sweet Hereafter all the various elements and threads are oriented around the central tragedy of the school bus accident. In Le Amiche, Rosetta’s tragedy is there to provide a similar center of orientation, but when that focal point disappears towards the end of the film, the story seems cast adrift.
• Related to that previous point is the problem of the hesitant relationship between Clelia and Carlo. The two characters, attractive though they are, never develop any “chemistry” between them, and there doesn’t seem to be any promise of real romantic passion. To each of them, perhaps, the other is more of an alluring symbol than a real person. This is reflected in the way Carlo lurks hidden behind luggage carts as Clelia’s train departs. It is true that he was put off by Clelia’s preferential concerns for her career and her all-too-practical recognition of their differing class backgrounds. But a passionate lover wouldn’t just sit back in silence. If he were a man of action, he would have made a stronger case and insist that she not go. (On the other hand, perhaps we have all let key opportunities slip away when we shouldn’t have.)

On the whole Le Amiche is well worth viewing, particularly for those who appreciate Antonioni’s work. It explores some of the complicated emotions and social relations that are in play among women in modern middleclass society.
★★★½