Preceded by short: Suicide Attempt (Tentato suicido) (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1953). In this segment from Love in the City (Amore in città), an omnibus work in the neorealist vein in which stories from newspaper reports were filmed with the actual individuals who had the experiences, Antonioni interviews three would-be suicides for love. (20 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm) Le amiche follows the lives of four young women as observed by Clelia, who has returned to her native Turin to open a fashion salon. She throws in with a group of wealthy women and their assorted mates; one, Rosetta, an unhappy daughter of rich parents, succumbs to the social vacuum and attempts suicide. "In Le amiche Antonioni uses the long shot and long take to distance us, to place in doubt our relation to the visible. In the film, the painter Lorenzo defines Rosetta as 'beauty' in an isolated, still image. The painting appears in close-up as a simplified idea, a legible object to be possessed. Antonioni, taking an opposite approach to his subject, expresses the ambiguity of the women in Pavese's novella, who are not objects of information or delectation. In Antonioni, representations based on 'editing'-photographs, close-ups, and paintings-seem to be symptoms (more than causes) of an inability to see-see who we are, see the soul. It is a difficulty so great that perhaps all we can hope for at the end is no end at all, but an open, and therefore honest, interpretation." (Ryan DeRosa)