Daniela Silverio e "A Identificação de uma Mulher"

Vi "A Identificação de uma Mulher", logo a seguir ao "Eclipse", duas décadas entre os dois, um abismo entre actores de um e de outro. A história é estranha e improvável, os factos interessam pouco, apenas dois aspectos sobejam: a procura da mulher ideal e a tentativa de chegar ao sol (entender tudo, entender o universo).



Daniela Silverio, Mavi a personagem, é a mulher-mistério de Antonioni, a substituta de Monica Vitti no grande plano, no aproximar do olhar, na procura da sensualidade. Mas a beleza de Daniela, que estranhamente (ou não), é quase uma desconhecida, não tem as correntes subterrâneas que poderia ter. A sua existência de superfície fica pela rama das coisas e o seu mistério não chega a estar à altura de Niccoló, realizador em busca de uma personagem com carácter feminino.



A tentativa de definir o "feminino" lembrou-me de "Annie Hall", quase nos antípodas deste frio italiano. Uma Nova Iorque estranhamente quente, povoada por mulheres vivas e reais, um realizador assombrado, tal como o deste filme, por um universo ameaçador e em expansão. Antonioni e a impossibilidade do conhecimento. Woody Allen com a farsa cómica, o "just do it" de uma Brooklyn provinciana.



O universo em "Annie Hall":
"Mrs. Singer: He's been depressed. All of a sudden, he can't do anything.
Doctor: Why are you depressed, Alvy?
Mrs. Singer: Tell Dr. Flicker. [To the doctor] It's something he read.
Doctor: Something he read, huh?
Alvy: The universe is expanding...Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, some day it will break apart and that will be the end of everything.
Mrs. Singer: What is that your business? [To the doctor] He stopped doing his homework.
Alvy: What's the point?
Mrs. Singer: What has the universe got to do with it? You're here in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not expanding.
Doctor: It won't be expanding for billions of years, yet Alvy. And we've got to try to enjoy ourselves while we're here, huh, huh? Ha, ha, ha.


O sol em "A Identificação de uma Mulher":
- É a história de uma nave espacial que vai na direcção do sol. Pertíssimo do sol.
- Mas não arde?
- Na ficção científica, não se pode dizer o que é verosímil e o que não o é. A minha nave espacial é um asteróide capturado no espaço e transformado numa nave. É feita de um mineral muito raro que resiste até um milhão de graus.
- E porque é que se aproxima do sol?
- Para o estudar. No dia em que o homem perceber como se distribui a matéria dentro do Sol e a sua dinâmica, talvez compreenda como é feito todo o Universo e a razão de ser de tantas coisas.
- E depois?


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''Identification of a Woman'' is an excrutiatingly empty work. It's also beautiful and sad - virtually a parody of the director's great ''L'Avventura'' and some of his other earlier films.

In the course of his search for a subject, Niccolo finds and falls in love with a high-born, enigmatic young woman named Mavi (Daniela Silverio), who wears her hair cut very short and who makes love with a furious abandon that is about the only thing in the film that works. The love scenes are terrific and close to clinical.

In the course of their two-month affair, Niccolo receives veiled threats to drop Mavi - or else. His sister, a successful gynecologist, is suddenly fired from her post at a hospital. Niccolo is sure that there is some connection to Mavi.

He also is uneasy about her elegant friends. He doesn't understand the glances that pass between them. There are hints of trysts he has no part in. For a man who has been living la dolce vita in Rome for some time, and who may possibly have seen ''La Dolce Vita,'' Niccolo is remarkably naive.

About half-way through the film, Mavi disappears. Niccolo becomes obssessed with finding her again, though it is obvious to everyone she has elected to disappear.

While searching for Mavi, Niccolo slips into an affair with another beautiful young woman, an actress named Ida (Christine Boisson) who, by chance, becomes the key to the solution of the mystery of Mavi, which is, in fact, no great mystery. This is not to say that ''Identification of a Woman'' is any tidier about its solutions than ''L'Avventura'' or ''Blow-Up.'' There are still a number of red herrings drying in the sun when the film ends.

There also are lines of dialogue that don't easily leave the memory. ''What did God do before creating the world?'' Mavi asks at one point, and Niccolo loves her all the more. Reading the Paris edition of The Herald Tribune, Niccolo becomes interested in a story headlined, ''Scientists Say Expanding Sun Poses Threat to Earth's Future,'' which sets him to thinking about a possible screenplay and the rest of us to remembering ''Annie Hall.'' When Niccolo takes Ida to Venice, she says ''the water is sad.'' Niccolo describes the germ of an idea he has for a film as ''a feeling with feminine contours.'' This is very high-class, story-conference material.

Da crítica do NY Times, aqui.