Antonioni's mid-career masterpiece - his first film in colour - tells the story of Giuliana (Monica Vitti), a young woman suffering a mental and emotional crisis and embarking tentatively on an affair. Vitti - Antonioni's lover and muse, and the star of his earlier films L'avventura, L'eclisse and La notte - gives a magnificent, startling performance. She is ably accompanied by Carlo Chionetti as her unemotional husband Ugo, and Richard Harris as Corrado, the restless associate of Ugos who finds himself drawn to her.