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Drama

L'Avventura

Year
1960
Length
143 minCriterion 143-minute presentation Version sources ↓

A woman disappears from a rocky island, and the search slowly exposes a different kind of absence.

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MysteryBeautifulBleak Best saved for later · For patient viewers Drama
L'Avventura: A white paper dress lies on dark rocks beside layered blue sea and an orange sun.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

What to expect

Michelangelo Antonioni lets landscape, duration, and failed attention displace the expected mystery plot. The film’s modernism lies in treating emotional drift as action and architecture as pressure.

How to ease in

Do not expect the disappearance to produce a conventional solution. Watch how the searchers’ priorities change, and how islands, towns, and empty spaces reorganise their relationships.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes disappearance, infidelity, emotional cruelty, sexual coercion, and unresolved distress.
Momo's Note May contain spoilers Who is Momo? →
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I thought I was still wondering where Anna had gone, yet my attention had drifted towards the other people. When I noticed, forgetting her frightened me more than the absence of an answer. The film refuses to leave that callousness with its characters; it makes me notice my own.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Credits

Version map

Criterion 143-minute presentation 143 min 143 minutes is attached only to this named source presentation; no restoration, score, territory, cut, frame rate, or source element is inferred. Source: Criterion Collection — L'avventura (1960) Runtime reference · Checked 2026-08-16

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