L Avventura Themes

L’Avventura focuses on a group of mostly wealthy, bored and spoiled young adults; none of whom have fulfilling relationships, jobs, or general purpose in their lives. This is the perfect class of people that represent living an existential life. The first character introduced is Anna, a young woman who is in a constant state of existential angst. She is a disoriented individual who does not understand the world or her purpose on it. Antonioni uses couples in the film to explore issues of gender dynamics and relationships. He views the two binary sexes as natural enemies because they can never understand one another. The sexes are brought together by the certain force of attraction, which will inevitably lead to many tribulations. This also

Antonioni examines all these through highly sophisticated camera work, as he carefully frames each shot as if it is a photograph. TS

IS. Anna is always sad and upset without any reason, making her the most miserable character in the film. Her character simply exudes existential anxiety. When Anna gets to see Sandro after their long departure she says it was harrowing to be apart yet she does not want to see him. When they are finally reunited Sandro asks Anna how she is, which Anna replies back that she is feeling awful. Sandro asks why and Anna mocks him asking, out of her own frustration. Anna never knows what she wants, she just knows that she does not want a “conventional marriage”. She aspires to live an “authentic existence” where she has an identity apart from her husband and father. Since this is impossible for women in her social class Anna’s existence disappears. Anna’s disappearance is a significant turning point in L’Avventura, in view of the fact that there is such a contrast in the characters’ behavior before and after the disappearance. Half way through the film one

In L’Avventura, one can see that the characters in the film use escapist sexuality as a replacement of work in their lives and a way to forget the problems in their lives. In the scene of Anna’s and Sandro’s reunion, Anna first discloses that she is going to leave Sandro. However, when she sees Sandro she makes sexual advances so they can have sex in order to avoid talking about their relationship problems and their issues that they may have lurking at the surface. Sandro and Anna make Claudia wait patiently as they have sex, as if what they are doing at that moment is the only thing that matters. This idea of escapist sexuality was shown again in the scene after Sandro ruined the young architect’s drawing of a church window. Before this scene, Claudia was making advances on Sandro which he rejected, and Claudia found out Sandro does not love her. Now Sandro came back to Claudia making advances on her and Claudia is hesitant at first because it is evident Sandro is using escapist sexuality to run away from his burden of being a failed architect. Sandro and Claudia are undeniably very sexually active with one another, be that as it may, it is interesting to speculate how much of it is serial sex or genuine love. Many young adults practice serial sexuality hoping it will lead to true love. Freud explains this type of sexuality as “the ego is not the master of its own house”. This means we are led by our primitive desires (‘id’ as Freud would call it) and not by our logic