The tale opens with out of focus shots of a factory, that, as it focuses, shows a debt to the Precisionist school of painting. Many critics love to throw painterly terms around, in regards to Antonioni’s work, but in doing so reveal only their ignorance of the art form. An out of focus shot is not Impressionistic — Impressionism was not about blurriness. Nor are the films of Antonioni (and this film in particular) Expressionistic. There are some tinges of these ideas, but as a whole, such would far too limit the director’s art. Similarly, abstract and surreal are two other terms that bad critics append to this film, and neither is appropriate. Above all, image-wise, this film is Precisionistic. Go Google the term and the dialectic is done.

After these establishing shots, which reverse the normal inward drift of full screen shot, then close-ups, the camera follows Giuliana as she wanders aimlessly in life, with her son, Valerio (Valerio Bartoleschi), who is a selfish brat, and cons her with a feigned illness - likely polio - and a husband, Ugo (Carlo Chionetti), who openly lusts after other women, and tries to force his sexual desires upon her, even though she is still unbalanced and mentally recovering from a breakdown that institutionalized her.

Ugo is a middle manager type at a huge industrial plant, at the port of a town we barely see. The film was shot in Ravenna, but we are never certain that is where it is set. Then she meets Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris, whose lines were dubbed, and quite well), a business associate of Ugo’s, who’s in town to recruit employees for a year long ‘project’ in Patagonia. From the moment he sees her, he lusts for her, Freudianly slipping by stating, "I don’t want to start with a lie," when he first follows her to a location Giuliana is planning to open a shop in.

After that, the film becomes a sort of sexual cat and mouse game between the two, with both eventually succumbing to their mutual seductions, but still not getting satisfaction. Corrado is the opposite of Giuliana. Where she fears change, he fears stasis, and he, early on, gives hints as to why this is. His character, at one point, even states, "At times, I feel as if I had no right to be where I am. That’s why I keep moving."

While some critics have taken Harris to task for his acting, he does quite well, considering he did not speak the language, and his lack of familiarity with Italian aids his performance as someone confused. He was coming off of his star-making role in Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life, and left The Red Desert early to film Major Dundee with Sam Peckinpah. Reputedly some scenes shot from afar and behind were filmed with a body double, with Harris’s voice double doing the speaking.