(Italy 1960)

I’ve really been digging Italian midcentury films lately. L’avventura was not one of them. Anna (Lea Massari) is a weirdo with a bug up her butt– about love, marriage, intimacy, whatever. While on a boating excursion with her fiancé, Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and a group of friends, she has a meltdown and tells Sandro that she wants to be alone– then promptly disappears. Like, without a trace. This sets off a hunt for the psycho, and one of her friends, Claudia (Monica Vitti), gets involved with Sandro. Trouble starts.

L’avventura has hot women (particularly Vitti), cool cars, and a rad surf-music theme song. Other than that, it’s way too long, slow, boring, and not artfully done. It lacks the cinematic pizzazz of Italian films from this period: the settings are nothing special, and it has a cheap look to it. I didn’t care what happened to Anna by the end. Ciao bella.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) D

http://www.janusfilms.com/lavventura/