This is the second time I've seen this film and I must say it's even better than I thought it was. This is the film I'd like to see more times. Not only is it visually rewarding, like all Antonioni films I've seen (not that many
), but it just invites you to see something more with each viewing. That's what it looks like to me.
This film is all about illusions, from the fashion world this photographer lives in to the way he sees the world, through camera. It's all perfectly summed up in the scene with pantomime artists, towards the end. The potential murder story, the only thing that vaguely resembles a plot, reveals this especially. The photographer only watches the man and the woman in the park through his camera, he sees them as sequence of frames that he needs to later connect into a story. Like filmmaker, like Antonioni himself
. It was a love story at first and a story about adultery. But, when he starts blowing up his photos, he sees something (or maybe not) and it becomes a murder mystery. Very cinematic.
What is also interesting is that throughout the film he was somewhat disillusioned with the fancy, hip world he lives in. He wanted something real. We see him searching for that in the beginning in the factory and later with the woman from the park. She seems more real to him than all those beautiful model girls he's surrounded with. But, the thing is, he was playing dress up in the factory, he once again "experiences" the hard every day life through camera, it looks tragically romantic. Like the heroine of his mysterious murder story. And when he searched for the body in the park, I felt he was disappointed it wasn't there. That's the reality, the illusion is more interesting.
So he wants reality, but at the same time doesn't know how to see it with bare eyes. Is it even there? Does it exist? Is everything only a point of view? The ending with pantomime artists playing tennis with non existent ball brings this questions to the surface. And when he picks up that ball and throws it back, that says to me that he finally embraces illusion as his only reality (that's when he
and we actually hear the ball and the rackets).
The favorite line of the film: "I thought you were in Paris" "I am"
Great film, works on many levels.