I really enjoyed “Red Desert” (Il deserto rosso), dir. Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy, 1964), starring Monica Vitti and Richard Harris. It was a visual feast with understated drama. The camera moves slowly, inviting viewers to look at and see the industrial and seaside landscapes, the factory technology and domestic interiors, the refuse and pollution, the faces and postures of individuals, the colors.

Giuliana, the protagonist, is a troubled middle-class woman who was once hospitalized after a largely silenced event that still affects her. The film invites us to try and relate the sounds, smells, and textures of the protagonist’s social and physical surroundings to her inner life as the social interactions and dialogs unfold.

A middle-class woman and her son, dressed as if in a nice town or city, but they are in an industrial area, factories on both sides of them, smokestacks and power lines, hazy, presumably polluted. There is a small road, but no sidewalk. They are walking in the dirt and gravel.