This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

or sketch of feelings, fragments of dialogues, desires as veils, love as intention. a love story. as fragment from Antonini universe. like a cage, like shadows, like meets, like isolated lives. a puzzle , at the first sigh. in fact, memorable scenes - the crash of stock market or the dialogues about Kennya, or the first scene between Vittoria and Ricardo. a film more precise in the description of near reality for 2017 than 1962.

L'ECLISSE is a romantic drama about an alienation, life's riddles and relationships.Vittoria, a young literary translator, breaks off her relationship with her boyfriend, an older writer, in his apartment, following a long night of conversation. Sometime later, she visits her mother at the frantic Rome Stock Exchange, which is very busy upon Vittoria's entrance. She meets a young and energetic stockbroker. He is her mother's stock broker. Vittoria attempts to discuss her own recent breakup, but her mother is preoccupied with her earned profits. However, she is impressed with a young stockbroker, his character, outlook and business...Mr. Antonioni has continued his tradition. His vague and abstract pictures are a reflection of human relations and interests. The protagonists are sad, confused and somewhat lifeless. This is not a story about an unhappy or elusive love. This is a story about the needs and emotions in a material world. Mr. Antonioni has made a contrast between the inner moods of a woman and intimidating behavior of a group of people who run for the money. His unconventional narrative reveals a naked truth, especially in final scenes.The characters are lost and vague.Monica Vitti as Vittoria is a timid and suspicious young woman, who sees the pieces of greed and lust in the people around her. Due to her lack of confidence and self introversion, she is trying to establish an abstract relationship with objects. Alain Delon as Piero is a young beauty from a material world. He, unconsciously, complements Vittorias nature. However, his relaxed approach, in terms of love, has a negative effect on her.The last scenes are a kind of projection of a material life, in which a normal existence is not possible.

"Love" in modern society has always been a major point in Antonioni films, especially on his unofficial trilogy about Alienation (L'avventura, La Notte and L'eclisse)and his first color film "Red Desert", as well human loneliness, their emotional distance and futility is again amazingly represented in the last part of trilogy with "L'eclisse". At the surface, "L'eclisse" is one of Antonioni's simplest films, but it's not in the surface that makes the film so complex, but really in what is add on in the scenes. Vittoria (Monica Vitti) is a tired young woman that after ending her presumed failed relationship with Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) tries to search for a true relationship. The beginning shows us a great drama: a couple (Vittoria and Riccardo) who can no longer communicate with each other, the affection left between them is little, almost none, there is only left that great and agonizing silence which shows nothing positive about their relationship. Then later she tries to keep a relationship with Piero (Alain Delon) but their relationship itself already seems failed and empty, it seems more an attempt to fulfill their loneliness and emptiness. She, differently from the other characters of the film doesn't accept her failed relationship with men, her mother and even herself, which drives Vittoria in her endless and doomed journey trying to search for herself and affection. The film is realistic, and at the same time strangely surreal, like if a force of nature was directing the film (especially the character of Vittoria), wind blows and trees becomes in certain points of the film essential. Every scene, every object gains symbolism and a special importance in the film (as in practically all Antonioni films). Now coming to the extraordinary end sequence, which is easily one of the greatest in cinema history. Images of the locations were the main characters were, these haunting and strangely scary scenes shows us many things, one of them being human's eclipse, we see buildings and many manifestations of humans existence but yet we can not feel them, they seem cold, distant and bleak, as humans tend to be nowadays. Now the eclipse of human's emotion has finally (and unfortunately) happen.

It only takes a few films to become familiar with the methodic ways of Michelangelo Antonioni. Themes of alienation, disconnection, romance without the romance and dealing with an ambiguous existential way of life. It's fascinating but challenging. I came into L'Eclisse wanting to love it because I love L'Avventura and Blowup but deliberately hard to connect to. We're thrown into a vague but disheartening scenario with depressed characters and just have to follow down that road. It has rich cinematography that has beautiful composition, but an gut- sinking emptiness. It's almost too precise and too self-aware. But that's the beauty of the film, its aesthetic is not supposed to be pleasing, even though artistically it should be. In fact, it's painful. Painful to watch the busiest life of the film being at the stock market while the rest of nature is desolate yet so picturesque. Machines and technology are prominent throughout the film and often physically get in the way of human relationships. The film is a profound and quietly poignant statement on human desires and insecurities, if a little held back by a touch of pretence and too cold for its own good.8/10