Clara is a beautiful shop assistant projected into the movie world by her looks. Much like Bosè real story, her pretty face keeps her going, without her being much of an actress.

Clara marries a pushy movie producer who is too jealous to allow her career as a sex symbol and makes her starring in yet another version of Joan of Arc, instead.

The movie is a failure and Clara feel indebted with her husband, who lost lots of money. She completes the sexy comedy which was stalled by the husband and carries on an affair with a cynical diplomat, thinking it's "real love".

Clara discovers too late that love is not part of the parcel and she's left with the only option of playing the lead in sexy and cheap comedies.

It's somehow surprising to see how not so long ago, a woman was expected to obey her husband and refrain from expressing her wishes. Clara doesn't even know what she wants, she's just pushed around by all the men in her life. Her only relationship with a female "friend" is fake and opportunistic.

Still, similar stories are going on even nowadays with lots of young starlets who last as long as their youth does, to be replaced by the next wave.

Interesting movie, albeit not a great one.

Early Antonioni and although he is clearly feeling his way there are already signs of what is to become. We open with a fairly busy street scene and it becomes apparent the camera is following a woman along the pavement as first she pauses at an advertising poster and then approaches a cinema entrance. We only see her from behind and she enters the cinema to see the closing moments of herself on screen. It will later become apparent she is the star/victim of our picture. Later half the picture is taken up with a blank wall forming the corner of a street and a couple disappear behind it. There are several instances in sun and rain of cars and people walking across squares and beside buildings where the space is as important as those walking in its midst. Storywise the tale is more mundane. A naive young lady becomes committed to marriage without her knowledge, becomes involved elsewhere and the conflicts in her personal life are reflected in the conflicts in her working life in the cinema. Antonioni seems not to be a fan of popular cinema and if your vision is as sound and persuasive as his would prove to be maybe this is fine and another kind of popularity can be achieved but it is something of a stretch. Much cinema dismissed in the day as trash has survived with notable potency and resonance of the time and place whereas much arthouse cinema has disappeared without trace with charges of pretentiousness. Here we see the birth of Antonioni and whilst throughout his career he would construct scenarios railing against the men who presumed to control his icy maidens it would be his cinema eye, his certainty that place affects personality, that would carry most weight through his golden period from the late 50s up until his majestic and final great work, The Passenger.

About sex and cinema 'The Lady Without Camelias' reaches new heights in technical quality and sexiness, for Antonioni, whilst thoroughly dismantling the superficiality of cinema.