We've only just met

"She isn't my wife, really. We just have some kids. No, no kids, not even kids. Sometimes, though, it feels as if we had kids. She isn't beautiful, she's... easy to live with. No, she isn't. That's why I don't live with her."

- Thomas (David Hemmings) in Blow-Up

I recently borrowed the 1966 film Blow-Up from my local library. 

Maybe I picked it off the shelf because I faintly remembered it being recommended to me...

...or perhaps I was seduced by the come-hither video cover...

...or, in all likelihood, I just wanted to tell people I saw a film by Michelangelo Antonioni. 

Antonioni. What a deliciously rich Italian name. It just purrs right off the tongue. 

"Yeah, I just watched Blow-Up by An-toooh-ni-oooh-ni. No biggie." Bellissimo!

Anyway, the film follows a day in the life of eccentric and witty fashion photographer, Thomas (David Hemmings). He shots beautiful women, has his way with beautiful women, and comes across a beautiful woman (Vanessa Redgrave) and her lover in a park, where he begins to take photos of them.

The woman, Jane, becomes irked when she sees Thomas taking photos of them. She confronts Thomas and demands to have the roll of film, but he does not give in. 

"I'm only doing my job. Some people are bullfighters, some people are politicians. I'm a photographer. "

Thomas then takes a few more pictures of Jane in the park as she runs away alone.

Thomas later makes large blowups of the photos in his studio and notices a corpse lying underneath the trees and a man with a gun hiding in the woods.

And that was my sub par film synopsis. 

I am still wrapping my head around this fine gem of a film and I may never get around to doing a full-blown movie review, but there's just so much juicy political, cultural, and aesthetic meat to this film that only watching it could do it justice.

      "Sometimes reality is the strangest fantasy of all." 

Subtle humour and sexual tension at its finest.

Finito.