To Rome With Love (2012)
Certified: 14
Duration: 112 minutes
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Alison Pill, Flavio Parenti, Judy Davis, Roberto Benigni, Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Alessandra Mastronardi, Penelope Cruz, Ornella Muti, Riccardo Scamarcio
KRS release
Woody Allen follows the excellent Midnight in Paris (2011) with a throwaway and frivolous picture that is simply too pretentious for its own good.
The only thing emerging victorious here is Rome
The film is mostly supposed to be an indictment on fame and celebrity, middle-age crisis and European infatuation.
The usual Allen themes are present but here dealt with in a sprawling manner that left me wandering and restless by the end. The film never amounted to much despite all the promises.
To Rome with Love is made up of several storylines that have nothing in common except the fact that they are set in Rome.
Allen plays Jerry, a retired classical music producer who is in Rome along with his wife, psychologist Phyllis (Judy Davis) to meet their daughter Hayley (Alison Pill) who wants to introduce to them her Italian fiancée (Flavio Parenti).
Jerry is not all that happy about the situation but when he meets up with his in-law, Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato), he changes opinion.
Giancarlo is a mortician but when he is in the shower, he sings like Caruso. Jerry will risk fighting with everyone to get Giancarlo on stage to do Pagliacci even if it means getting a shower on stage for his soap-sodded star.
Roberto Benigni plays Leopoldo, an average man who has a boring office job. Suddenly he becomes a celebrity and everyone wants to know his opinion about everything. This leads him to have to attend premieres, get promotions, be on TV and bed beauties, with his wife accepting it all with serenity.
John (Alec Baldwin) is a veteran architect who had once lived in Rome. He meets up with Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), a student architect who shows him around. The latter lives peacefully with his girlfriend Sal (Greta Gerwig). His life is turned upside down when Sal’s friend, a very sexually active wannabe actress named Monica (Ellen Page), comes to live with them.
Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) is a small-town young man who has just married Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi). They travel to Rome to meet his uncles and aunts who have lots of business connections. He wants to impress them but Milly gets lost in Rome and ends up in the hands of famous actor Luca Salta (Antonio Albanese) while he ends up taking prostitute Anna (Penelope Cruz) to meet his strict family.
The film’s structure is a tad confusing. The Cruz/Tiberi/Mastronardi storyline seems to be set over one day. The other three storylines seem to be spread out over several weeks if not more. Yet they all intersect together.
This robs the urgency out of one story and undermines the film as a whole.
At one point the character of Baldwin, who is here in excellent form, says: “With age comes exhaustion.” This line seems to sum up Allen’s handling of his own neuroses, something which he has been doing forever on film but here lacks his usual cathartic quality.
As is his norm Allen can veer from the sublime to the erratic in the same picture. To Rome with Love however consists mostly of the latter and little of the former.
Here he brings to the screen a mix of the whimsical and the nostalgic trying to embrace the spirit of the Italian capital.
His idea is to deliver a comedy with meaning but he only succeeds here in Benigni’s storyline and this I believe is mostly due to the Italian actor’s input. On the other hand, Cruz is given a really thankless role and that storyline was pretty unfunny. I could not fathom how she ended up getting the short end of the stick.
Allen himself as an actor is left in the shade by Davis.
The only thing emerging victorious here is Rome which, through Darius Khondji’s lens, really shines. I left the film longing to once again walk those beautiful streets.