Rent L'Eclisse (1962)

The Art of Falling Out of Love - L'Eclisse review by griggs

L’Eclisse is a film I didn’t expect to love—yet here we are, a near-perfect experience. Until now, I’ve struggled with Antonioni’s work: Blow-Up and The Passenger left me cold (though both are due a rewatch), Red Desert and L’Avventura nearly broke me, and only La Notte truly landed.

It opens with a breakup and follows the tentative, probably doomed connection between Monica Vitti’s disillusioned translator and Alain Delon’s slick stockbroker. Set mainly in Rome’s eerily quiet EUR district, the city feels more like a ghost town than a capital, amplifying the film’s alienation and emotional drift themes.

As ever with Antonioni, it’s mood over momentum, texture over dialogue—but this time, I was fully invested. Vitti is magnetic, all hesitation and grace, while Delon smoulders in sharp suits and moral vagueness.

The less said about the brief but baffling blackface scene, the better—Antonioni includes it early on as a throwaway gag, with Vitti returning from Kenya in costume. It’s meant to be playful but now comes across as casually racist and painfully out of touch, a reminder of the blind spots of the era.

And that final montage? Chilling, gorgeous, unforgettable. If this is what the end of love looks like, I’ve never seen it rendered more beautifully.