A remarkable and unusual looking film about a group of rich, intellectual and beautiful, but rootless and shallow young Italians who lose one of their party during a trip top an island. The film follows their increasingly desultory attempts to find he as they become lost in their own concerns.
Antonioni was no doubt a cerebral man with esoteric interests. But also a talented and original film maker.
I'd been looking forward to this film for a long time, but in the end I was rather disappointed in it. The start is very good, and for half an hour you think it's going to be a great film. The photography is superb, and the sea and the stones of the Aeolian Islands are wonderfully filmed. It's just that the cast in the main are rather lackadaisical and somehow uninteresting. Plus at 142 minutes it's far too long and you feel as though you couldn't care less about the rather boring people on show in the end.