“Lucia Bosè plays a Milanese shop girl who achieves a quick success on the screen because of her looks and charm, but who cannot move up into more challenging roles. She thus finds herself unable to advance or retreat, and there is no one to blame, not even herself. Bosè’s characterization of an intermediate mediocrity is so painfully honest that it seems to belong more to a novel of irony and sensibility than to a movie of popular appeal. With a very expressive mise-en-scène of loneliness and alienation, Antonioni transcends the traditional hypocrisies of the soap-opera genre, and while he favors ‘art’ over ‘life,’ he never loses touch with the throbbing feelings of his characters” (Andrew Sarris, Village Voice).