Identification of a Woman

      The investigation proceeded with vigor, if not always with judgment, and numerous individuals were examined to no purpose.

      —Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”

      LOVE STORY

      I wonder what kind of love story can possibly have meaning in our corrupt society today.

      —Mario, Niccolò’s collaborator and friend

      In Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963), the celebrated filmmaker Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), having had an enormous screen success, has entered a kind of creative crisis as he searches for the subject of his new film, a crisis in which his producer, his writer, the stars he has worked with, his wife, and the remembered salient figures from his childhood who now seem to have returned to populate his consciousness all swirl around him, suddenly sweep forward, and then ebb into the recesses of his thought without being able to leave behind the trace of an inspiration. Everywhere are women, each one a special magnificence, teasing, enchanting, cleansing, reproving, adoring Guido, but to no avail. He is tormented by possibilities. He cannot see what is coming next.

      In Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman, the celebrated filmmaker Niccolò Farra (Tomas Milian) is searching, too: if not exactly for the subject of a new film then for the female presence around which such a film might take shape, perhaps in the way a crystal takes shape when it forms around a single vital granule or the way that from a material speck a pearl takes shape within an oyster. Niccolò, at any rate, has been cutting out photographs of women and tacking them on his board, patiently, a little peremptorily, a little hopelessly, in his capacious apartment that looks upon a pine-lined Roman street and outside of which a bird’s nest sits empty in an evergreen branch. He wants to make a film about “a feeling in female form.” It is this feeling for which he seems to be searching—his wife having left him, and he now frequently being in the company of a young woman named Mavi Luppis (Daniela Silverio) whom he presumes (correctly) to come from the class of the aristocracy, although she denies it. A feeling in female form. He has a sister, a modest gynecologist looking for a promotion at the hospital, whose little boy has been leaving phone messages about some special postage stamps Niccolò promised him. Mavi takes him to a party where everyone knows her, especially an older man who stops her for a private conversation on the staircase. Niccolò is uncomfortable there, and also, in a way, in his relationship with Mavi altogether, until and unless he is making love to her, which he does furiously and with a great hunger while she writhes in an agony of pleasure (but also shifts position during orgasm to watch herself in a mirror). She spent time at a college in Wales, says she, where with the other girls she practiced lifesaving in their canoes and where there was no sex. (Quickly we are shown the canoes in the splashing navy blue waters crested with creamy foam, and the sedate stone college in its green lawn.)

      Niccolò has a rather vexing and mundane problem that is overwhelming him, transcending even his creative block. At home one night he received a telephone call from a strange man and an invitation to an encounter in a café the next morning. There, the bloke, sitting presumptuously with a dish of ice cream, told him that someone else was interested in “the girl” he was seeing; and that he should be “careful.” In outrage Niccolò left, but still cannot get this conversation and its implications out of his mind. Who is watching him? Who has hired this thug? Who is trying to come between Mavi and him and for what reasons? At the party with Mavi he therefore scans every face, even considers one genteel man, who is quickly retreating out of view, to be the culprit. Mavi is a little impatient with his continuing fears. At home, reading the newspaper—an article about the dangers of the sun expanding—he is discomforted, ill at ease. Learning from his sister that her application for promotion was unsuccessful, he is immediately certain his mysterious pursuer has arranged this defeat and is punishing him by hurting someone he loves. He feels that in general he is being watched. Indeed, one night, a man is outside his apartment eyeing him from the street. He escapes in his car, picks Mavi up, and flees with her into the country, where they are caught in a dense fog. She is frightened, and he is unsympathetic. She confesses her fear that she is being pursued by her mother’s lover, the man who spoke with her at the party, but in a flashback we learn that the man’s true purpose in drawing Mavi aside was to announce the shocking news that he is her father. Mavi and Niccolò drive to a villa he rented once, and to which he still has the key. But the place frightens her even more and she wants to leave. They make love. In the morning, he sees that two young women have in fact rented the place, and also that Mavi is gone. Back in Rome he searches for her, to no avail. He phones her mother’s house and the butler announces, “Niccolò Farra is on the telephone, searching for Maria Vittoria.” “Let him search,” the old lady replies. Mavi has gone off the map.

      Still, Niccolò thinks he is being haunted by a mysterious force that is drawing Mavi away. His sister comes with her son to visit, but is insufficiently sympathetic to suit Niccolò’s needs. The boy gets his postage stamps and is especially fond of a pair that show astronauts. “You should make a science fiction film!” says he. Niccolò hunts Mavi at a swimming pool, where he meets a young woman (Lara Wendel) whose sexual preference is masturbation, especially with someone who knows how to help her; and who admits to having slept with Mavi one night when the men they were with wanted to talk about soccer. Then Niccolò meets an old girlfriend, who agrees to spend a pleasant evening with him in town. She needs to find a place to pee, so they head toward a theater, where a young woman, one of the cast of the play, is disappearing inside. “Sexy,” says Niccolò’s friend. Later the same night, the old friend having left, Niccolò returns to the theater and meets this actress, Ida (Christine Boisson). They spend time together, especially at her villa on the outskirts of town where she keeps horses. He becomes her lover, and tells her all about Mavi and the strange case of being followed. A huge bouquet of red chrysanthemums is delivered for Mavi at Niccolò’s apartment; he sends them away. He goes off with Ida to her place, but soon she must go into town, only to return after several hours with the news that she has “found” Mavi, via an article in an issue of Time. How did she come by it? She went to the florist whose name was on the chrysanthemums, and found that they had been sent by a woman, probably the secretary of the person who had hired the man to follow Niccolò. And oddly, a copy of the magazine was at the flower shop. From an old contact, one of the editors of Time in Rome, Niccolò secures Mavi’s address, and drives there in his car. It is an apartment building with a marvelous curling staircase. He goes up and knocks on doors, one by one, but no one knows of Mavi. In one of the apartments he meets a young woman who regards him closely. He drives away but comes back in the late afternoon, this time climbing to the top of the stairs and waiting. Mavi enters the building and goes to the young woman’s door, but cannot find her key. He hears them conversing. “Niccolò is here, he came into the building,” says the voice from behind the door. Mavi looks up and sees him. She goes into the apartment and shuts the door.

      He becomes closer and closer to Ida, takes her to see the empty lagoon at Venice in the winter. In their skiff, on the waters which are as gray as dust and as sleek as silver, they embrace. Returned to their hotel, she gets a telephone call and comes to him elated. She is pregnant, has been since before they met. He responds coolly, it becoming clear immediately that for him this relationship has no future.

      Niccolò, finally, has made his film, about space explorers using an asteroid-ship to voyage near the sun in order to make calibrations. This ship is made of “a rare mineral, that resists a million degrees.” The little nephew’s voice asks why we go to the sun? “To study it,” Niccolò explains off-camera as we watch the asteroid approaching the great ball of fire. “The day mankind understands what the sun is made of … and the source of its power