When the music shifted dramatically from lighthearted pop to brooding instrumental during the titles I was afraid I was fully over Antonioni (I loved the first three I saw from him but was less enthusiastic about the subsequent two), but I did actually get pretty into it after awhile. For some reason I thought this was those two wandering around through modernist architecture for two hours, but there's actually not much (physical) wandering or modernist architecture, though it's not devoid of either. It's actually a lot more like La notte than L'avventura. There are three scenes that stand out as particularly good: the scene where they play Africans (one of the areas Antonioni shines most is when he's in full-out nutty mode, which is probably why I prefer Zabriskie Point and Blowout to his Italian work), the scene at the air club (the other area Antonioni shines most is when he's capturing whatever emotion he captures here, which I'm not sure I know a word for but it's one I associate with traveling by car), and of course the ending (I especially like the shot that tracks the blonde and you think it's back to Vitti until she turns and it's just a random person). This is probably the most mature of Antonioni's trilogy in a lot of ways (or boldest as Scorsese says), but I'll take L'avventura any day.
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