Die Freundinnen (1955)
36KDie Freundinnen: Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. With Eleonora Rossi Drago, Gabriele Ferzetti, Franco Fabrizi, Valentina Cortese. A young woman returns to her hometown of Turin to set up a new fashion salon and gets involved with a troubled woman and her three wealthy friends.
“Viewed today Michaelangelo Antonioniu0026#39;s u0026quot;Le Amicheu0026quot; feels like a dry-run for his great trilogy of alienation that began with u0026quot;LAvventurau0026quot;. This movie isnu0026#39;t in the same class but it is still very fine. Itu0026#39;s like Cukoru0026#39;s u0026quot;The Womenu0026quot; minus the laughs as lonely, pragmatic Clelia, (an excellent Eleonora Rossi Drago), returns to her native Turin and falls in with a group of rich, bored and, in one case, suicidal women and equally bored and cynical men, the one exception being Carlo, (Ettore Manni), with whom she starts some kind of relationship.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIf itu0026#39;s not quite as densely plotted as u0026quot;Lu0026#39;Avventurau0026quot; and if there are no set-pieces to equal those that were to come later in Antonioniu0026#39;s work it nevertheless displays a very cool intelligence that never panders to the clichés of this kind of female orientated picture; there are no hints of lesbianism and the friendships are fickle at best. Even as early as 1955 Antonioni was hooked on that old ennui. Not one of his masterpieces, perhaps, but an essential part of the Antonioni canon all the same.”
