Alex Kolpan’s review published on Letterboxd:
Corrado Zeller: "Could you eat me too?"
Giuliana: "If I loved you."
As simple as this exchange of dialogue is, it speaks to the dichotomy in Red Desert...a dichotomy I think Michelangelo Antonioni wanted to achieve.
All the characters seem to be in constant distress, even when they are relaxed or not physically part of the environment they feel distain for. There is a physical and innately human opposition to the environment these characters find themselves in. An environment which has been eating itself from the inside out, with the same mouth and with the same hands of men, that women like Giuliana and the rest of the characters in Red Desert, subjectively belong to.
...The presentation is gorgeous but theres something not right internally...
Giuliana attempts to get away from the industrialized landscape she's become familiar with, opting to take a voyage into the sea -- only to realize she's still entrapped. On the ship, Giuliana feels even more claustrophobia than in the outside world. She succumbs to awkward encounters, structural imprisonment, bizarre sexual advancements (there's more added confusion, as she is married and her husband is the owner of a local and massive plant) and general feelings of loss and dissolution.
Cinematographically, Red Desert speaks to Michael Antonioni's dichotomy. Instead of the more emotional and self discovering side of the movie I listed previously, the movie also plays as something beautiful, a beauty that really shouldn't be as beautiful as it is.
The colors, compositions, saturation, manipulation and the subtle hints at magical realism, allows each frame to became engaging and confrontational to whoever is watching. Red Desert is a slow burning look, at the nightmarish reality of the industrial and capitalist modernization of our world (and pretty much everywhere on earth as time will continue to go on and more and more places will crumble under the weight of major corporations) mixed with some bizarre lingering sense of untapped beauty that can be achieved.
For me the beauty is more so in the way that Red Desert is filmed. It's very painterly as if the characters are walking through one of the finest pastel paintings of the modern age. However, their faces are filled with clarity and so are their emotions.
As a viewer I can discern these two: the environment from the person, but the characters in Red Desert can't seem to. In real life, sometimes it's hard for me to discern the two as well.
It's kind of like industrialization as a whole. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I hope it's a good thing because lord knows I can't stop it.