In contrast to the pilgrimages of L'avventura, La notte takes place over one night, in one city. But Antonioni's characters all are wanderers in a strange land: in Eclipse, Alain Delon, in love, will say, "I feel like I'm in a foreign country." In La notte, that foreign territory is a marriage of ten years being questioned for the first time. Marcello Mastroianni, a novelist, and Jeanne Moreau, his wife, while visiting a dying friend, realize that there is little left between them. The rest of the night is spent in escape and disillusionment, played out against Antonioni's rigorous sense of place and architecture. "Within its time span of less than twenty-four hours, the film proposes courses its characters might have taken in the past, points to some of the missed turnings: Jeanne Moreau's walk through Milan is a walk through her own life" (Penelope Huston). It is not often recognized that Antonioni is a consummate director of women's emotions, since what he deals with is alienation and its spaces; but in La notte, the marvelous Moreau begins the retreat to Vitti's Red Desert island.