Il filo pericoloso delle cose (Michelangelo Antonioni, 2004)

[Dylan]

I've been waiting a long time for this announcement. At last, the Warner R1 of the omnibus "Eros" has been announced.

Extras are slim aside from the inclusion of the largely acclaimed short film by Antonioni, "Eye to Eye."

I'll definitely be purchasing this, but I'm disappointed that I have to wait until February.

[jcelwin]

Nice cover art, very emotive. Took me a second to realise what it was, as I followed the image downward.

[benm]

jump on down to chinatown. i have a VCD version of it and it's great quality with great subtitles

[Oedipax]

I'm probably most excited about that Antonioni short. Is this the one where he gets up and walks around a museum? Rosenbaum mentioned it somewhere, I figured I'd never get a chance to see it.

[Barmy]

It appears that the Antonioni segment is in that badly-dubbed Italian, rather than the original English. Could they not have offered both versions?

I still think the reaction to the Antonioni piece was overly harsh. It was my favorite of the three.

[kinjitsu]

On the Australian R4 SE of 2046 Wong mentions in his hour long single take chat with Maggie Pomeranz that Almodovar was indeed slated to do an episode but couldn't meet the contractual deadline.

What a pity since Almodovar would have justly rounded out the omnibus with something offbeat and sexy.

[cdnchris]

It was because Almodovar dropped out that Soderbergh signed on. Originally it was supposed to be Antonioni, Wong, and Almodovar. I'm suspecting Almodovar's would have played where Soderbergh's was.

[DrewReiber]

According to all the publicity and project information on Eros at the time of initial development, Almodovar was attached to direct the interlinking segments.

[Andre Jurieu]

As I recall Almodovar was supposed to direct one of the three segments, but decided he didn't have the time (due mostly to filming Bad Education) and was thus replaced by Soderbergh. He was then supposed to direct the interlinking segments, but then was unable to because of duties/publicity for Cannes. I also recall that the entire project was conceived based upon Antonioni's involvement. I'm also doubting Soderbergh was trying to be overly erotic with his segment.

[Barmy]

Ahh, the Antonioni-bashers are back. Here's an interesting article on the filming of Antonioni's segment

And a quote from a good review:

Sure, it has all the elements of male fantasy, right down to the super-sexy Maserati convertible. But in the end, that male fantasy is revealed to be puny in relation to the power of women. It's no accident that the male character's last words come over a mobile phone, when he complains that it's snowing in Paris. It's not snowing on the beach in Italy. Nor is it an accident that his former partner Chloë is driving an SUV and not a sports car. At the conclusion, the two female leads exult in their bodies and their freedom in his absence in a way that reveals how incidental he has been in their bliss. I realize that, since this is an Antonioni film, we are dealing with a male fantasy of the female deconstruction of male fantasy. Still, that's a damned sight better than an uninterrogated male fantasy.

[Andre Jurieu]

I'd hardly consider myself to be an Antonioni-basher, but I am most certainly a The Dangerous Thread of Things-basher. As David points out, it's not the meaning that's being criticized so much as the execution.

[Barmy]

The very "offness" of "Dangerous" is what appeals to me. A 90-something stroke victim who has limited speaking and writing abilities is naturally going to make a different kind of film.

At the same time, the film seems very much of a piece with MA's other work. That meandering camera and the amount of footage devoted to matters that do not advance the "plot". For example, I loved that endless bit at the beginning where Cloe just puts on some clothes.

The cinematography is undeniably beautiful. Admittedly, it is a bit dialogue-heavy for Antonioni. I was definitely bothered by the dubbing, but otherwise I don't really see what was so bad about the actors' performances. In terms of what the film "means", the review I quoted above says it best.

I guess I don't really expect much from a short film. It's hard to think of more than a handful that mean anything to me. "Dangerous" has enough of the old Antonionian magic to make it worthwhile. That is why it surprises me that Antonioni fans have attacked it.

[Barmy]

So who got the DVD? I'm disappointed they did not give you an option to play Antonioni's piece with English dialogue. The "Eye to Eye" short is very nice.

From Daniel Kasman. I couldn't agree more. Also he is probably reviewing the Italian dub which makes the dialogue sound worse than it really is (admittedly the English version is a bit dodgy too, but at least it is the actors' own voices).

[quote]Notes on The Dangerous Thread of Things of Eros

I personally found Michelangelo Antonioni's section of Eros, titled The Dangerous Thread of Things from a story in the director's book The Bowling Alley on the Tiber, the most interesting and ambitious of the three, Wong Kar-wai's stumbling over a lame script and emptily aestheticized images, and Soderbergh's a disposable curiosity. Does Antonioni's section have its problems? Sure. While I have seen a whole lot of the director's work, I have not seen his fictional film (co-directed by Wim Wenders) made in closest proximity to this, Beyond the Clouds (1995) and his film shot after but released before Eros, the melancholy, exquisite Michelangelo Eye to Eye (2004) is not in a fictional context and has more in common with the director's many documentaries and quasi-documentaries. So it is a bit difficult to understand where the director is coming from in his approach to fiction in this film.

The “charactersâ€

[evillights]

From Daniel Kasman. I couldn't agree more. Also he is probably reviewing the Italian dub which makes the dialogue sound worse than it really is (admittedly the English version is a bit dodgy too, but at least it is the actors' own voices).

That's a nice piece; I think I've only read two or three others that took Antonioni's segment seriously. (As for the other two pieces, the Wong section is, in my opinion, one of his greatest films to date; the Soderbergh film has no redeeming qualities.) 'The Dangerous Thread of Things' -may- in fact be a masterpiece, maybe a minor-masterpiece (like there's any kind of universal value to these varying degrees). I have the impression that the film has as much to do with "cable television" and the "soft porn" aesthetic of the modern B-film, as it does with finding the intersection of (or tracing the thread that connects) cinema and the arousal of the spectator -- wondering, too, what role a "morality" plays in the whole thing (and what kind of morality it is, if it "does" at all). Two other good recent films exploring that latter idea (both in a completely different way) are Bonello's 'The Pornographer' and Tsai's 'The Wayward Cloud' (probably his greatest film, besides 'The River' and 'The Skywalk Is Gone').