"The recipient of a special jury prize after being booed and mocked at the Cannes Film Festival, L'avventura quickly became one of the most significant yet polarizing European movies of the 1960s. Director Michelangelo Antonioni explores the emptiness and alienation of modern life as both the subject and the langorous style of his movies. In this film, a dissipated group of Italian aristocrats vacations on a remote island, where one of them, Anna (Lea Massari), disappears. Her lover Sandro (Gabrielle Ferzetti) conducts a search, together with her best friend Claudia (frequent Antonioni lead Monica Vitti). Eventually they give up the search, and we never discover why or how she disappeared. Meanwhile, Sandro and Claudia have fallen in love, but even this ardor proves desultory: by film's end, the lovers stand on opposite sides of the beach, staring blankly into the horizon. The recipient of a special jury prize after being booed and mocked at the Cannes Film Festival, L'avventura quickly became one of the most significant yet polarizing European movies of the 1960s. Director Michelangelo Antonioni explores the emptiness and alienation of modern life as both the subject and the langorous style of his movies. Here, as in La notte and L'eclisse, Antonioni is interested less in developing a logical story than in exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection. Long a fixture of ""ten best film"" lists, L'avventura is also a must-see for viewers interested in artistic compositions that fully exploit a movie's space, color, and movement."