Thing that director Michelangelo Antonioni often did with his movies was telling as little as possible with its story and instead let its viewers fill in all of the blanks and interpret things in their own way. He was a a director that always managed to do this in a very effective way, making his movies special- and great viewing experiences.
No, this approach of course doesn't always make this movie an easy one to watch, especially since it's also quite a long one. It's a sort of movie you need to be in the mood for at the time, since you can't really afford to not play closely attention to everything, or you might loose track. So I can understand people not liking this movie and consider it a slow and boring one, especially when they aren't familiar or accustomed to Michelangelo Antonioni's way of film-making and storytelling.
And I must say, as much as I enjoy Michelangelo Antonioni's unique approach to film-making, I don't really regard this movie as one of his best examples. Problem that I had with this movie was that it basically could be divided into two different parts, that are different in style and approach to its story. And problem with this was that I liked the first half of the movie way better than its first. I liked the mystery-elements in it, as well as its settings and characters. This all changed in the movie its second half. It really doesn't make this always a consistent movie.
The main characters still manage to intrigue throughout though. They are well developed and I just can't understand some people calling them flat or shallow. They have much depth to them and go through some transitions throughout the movie. There is something missing in each of their lives, whether they really realize this or not and try to search for that something that it is they miss in their lives and try to really hold on to it, once they have found it.
As you could basically always expect from an European movie, it's visually a great looking one, with some great Mediterranean settings and nice black & white camera-work.
Just give it another shot if you didn't like it at first, since there simply is no way that anyone could ever call "L'avventura" a bad movie, unless that person doesn't understand its special approach of storytelling and film-making by Michelangelo Antonioni, or just simply wasn't in the right mood for it, the first time around.
7/10
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