3.5 stars. Rating: R, and much too harshly, for some sexual candor and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang
Having conquered France — and
re-ignited his career, not to mention securing yet another Academy Award, for
scripting last year’s Midnight in Paris — Woody Allen continues his European
tour with an intermittently charming visit to Italy.
The good news is that, while
nowhere near as fresh and clever as Midnight in Paris, To Rome with Love nonetheless continues Allen’s pleasantly droll examinations of continental
love, and the pursuit of same. His goal isn’t nearly as lofty this time; one
gets the sense that these four vignettes — connected solely by location — are
modest little pieces that Allen knew couldn’t be expanded into full-length
films.
As a result, we have a quartet of
short stories, much like his piece (“Oedipus Wrecks”) in the 1989 anthology
film, New York Stories. The results here are a bit uneven, ranging from
hilarious and sharply observed, to overly talky and mannered in the way that
sounds so uniquely “Woody Allen” ... the latter an affectation that may have
been extended beyond its sell-by date.
At 112 minutes, To Rome with
Love also feels overlong, with two of the segments suffering from visible
bloat: not terribly so, but enough to prompt viewer restlessness.
Allen signals his disparate
intentions by having the film introduced by a somewhat careless traffic
policeman (Pierluigi Marchionne), who proudly extols the virtues of his city,
and its many stories. We then meet four different sets of characters, each faced
with a crisis of circumstance, existential angst or celestial manipulation.
Newlyweds Antonio (Alessandro
Tiberi) and Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) have arrived in Rome to begin life
together, and so that he can impress his boorish, straight-laced relatives and
— through their contacts — secure an upscale job in the big city. But with only
hours to spare, Milly sets off to get her hair done, and becomes lost;
meanwhile, Antonio is confronted by a prostitute (Penélope Cruz) who shows up
at his hotel room by mistake, and then is forced to play his wife when the
condescending relations arrive.
To make matters worse, the
impressionable Milly wanders onto a film set and finds herself the target of a
legendary movie star (Antonio Albanese), who hopes to enjoy her as afternoon
delight. And she’s not wholly adverse to the notion; is it so awful, to want to
bed a famous film actor?
This is classic screwball comedy
material, played to perfection by all three leads. Cruz is enthusiastically
voluptuous as a well-endowed tart with a penchant for wicked double entendres,
and Mastronardi’s “innocence” is just as adorable as her dithering about
whether to fall from grace. Tiberi, in turn, is a classic nebbish needing a
healthy transfusion of self-respect ... and who better than Cruz, to administer
the dose?
Elsewhere, eminent American
architect John (Alec Baldwin), wandering the Roman streets where he once lived
as a twentysomething, encounters expat architecture student Jack (Jesse
Eisenberg), who is studying Rome’s glorious buildings and ruins in the company of
longtime girlfriend Sally (Greta Gerwig). Alas, Jack and Sally’s comfortable
bond is threatened by the arrival of her dazzling, flirtatious best friend,
Monica (Ellen Page), a would-be actress marking time between relationships.
John, remembering romantic blunders
from his own past, sees nothing but trouble in this now-awkward arrangement; he
tries to prevent Jack from falling under Monica’s enticing spell, but — alas! —
we all have to make our own mistakes.
Unfortunately, Allen’s
deliberately contrived storytelling style, in this segment, never quite gels.
Although John is introduced as a real, flesh-and-blood person, he soon becomes
more of a cautionary presence, like a conscience sitting on Jack’s shoulder,
unseen by everybody else ... except when he breaks that fourth wall to banter with Monica, who resents the way this
dude keeps harshing her vibe.
We become distracted by our
desire to know the rules by which Allen is playing, which seem to vary,
according to the demands of a given scene. Does Sally ever actually see John?
Hard to be sure. Does John, therefore, not really exist? Equally difficult to
determine.
Baldwin’s tart observations — and
futile efforts at counseling — are sharply written and impeccably delivered,
but he’s acting up a storm in a vacuum. Page is badly miscast, never credibly
inhabiting her role as a boyfriend-stealing narcissist. Even worse, Gerwig’s
Sally emerges as the dumbest woman on the planet, given the way she constantly
throws Jack into Monica’s arms, with no apparent awareness of the temptations
that surely will result.
Additionally, as a couple,
Eisenberg and Gerwig evoke echoes of the characters Allen and Diane Keaton
played in Annie Hall, and the comparison does this film’s young actors no
favors.
Still elsewhere, retired
avant-garde opera director Jerry (Allen, in an acting role) and his wife (Judy
Davis) have just arrived in Rome, to meet the charming young Italian (Flavio
Parenti, as Michelangelo) who has swept their daughter (Alison Pill, as Hayley)
off her feet. Retirement doesn’t suit Jerry, and his eyebrows shoot up after
hearing the gorgeous singing voice of Michelangelo’s father, Giancarlo
(renowned tenor Fabio Armiliato), an undertaker by trade.
There’s only one problem: Much
like the amphibian who’d perform solely for his owner — and nobody else — in
the classic Warner Bros. cartoon One Froggy Evening, Giancarlo’s dulcet tones
emerge only when in the shower. At all other times, he simply cannot recapture
that vocal magic.
Allen’s Jerry snaps off a
wonderful series of snarky one-liners, but they can’t mask the fact that this
single-note concept is belabored at far too great a length, with a wholly
anticipated payoff that delivers no surprises and therefore feels
underwhelming. More crucially, this saga’s focus on water-soaked arias pulls us
away from Hayley and Michelangelo, whose pending marriage seems in genuine
trouble, due to Jerry’s meddling ... and this detail is left unresolved.
The most satisfying and sharply
observed segment, by far, stars Roberto Benigni as Leopoldo Pisanello, a
dull-as-dishwater office drone who never can get his co-workers or family
members to pay attention to his views on politics, religion and anything else
that crosses his mind. Then, on an otherwise ordinary morning, Leopoldo finds himself
the center of a paparazzi squadron, with reporters, photographers and TV news
anchors hanging on his every word.
And I mean his every word, no matter how trivial: What
did you eat for breakfast? Do you wear boxers, or briefs? Rome’s most gorgeous
young women pass telephone numbers, hoping to bed him; Leopoldo and his wife
find themselves invited to every dignitary-laden, high-society function that
comes along.
This is, of course, a shrewd
indictment of the way modern media has made vacuous individuals “famous for
being famous,” thus shoving aside important world news in favor of puff pieces
reflecting on the state of Paris Hilton’s wardrobe, or whether Lindsey Lohan
will complete her court-ordered rehabilitation. We’re all complicit in this
travesty; if we didn’t lap up this thin gruel of faux celebrity, media outlets
would stop serving it.
Benigni’s frightened, puzzled and
suspicions reactions are priceless, as he confronts and attempts to deal with
these stalkers. Better still, of course, is the moment he begins to believe in
his own puffed-up importance; the comic timing present in this transformation
is equally funny.
Taken collectively, most of these
four stories contain plot contrivances that once again play to Allen’s
male-oriented fantasies of gorgeous young women throwing themselves at ordinary
dweebs who often are decades older. That note, as well, has been overplucked in
his many films ... although it’ll probably play just fine with the more
tolerant continental sensibilities regarding extra-marital dalliances.
More intriguing, perhaps, is
Allen’s clever juxtaposition of time. These stories are cross-cut in equal
doses, but they unfold at different rates. Milly and Antonio experience their
respective epiphanies in a single afternoon, while the Jack/Sally/Monica
triptych occupies weeks, if not months; the other two segments play out over
days, if not weeks. That’s a bit disorienting, although not unpleasantly so.
Ultimately, To Rome with Love emerges as an engaging appetizer that leaves us wanting a more substantial main
course. Granted, Allen wasn’t likely to achieve another “Midnight in Paris”
right away, but you never really know; he has re-invented his career many times
over, at this point.
Next time, then ... who knows?
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