(Beautiful, gorgeous Italians: take cover - Woody Allen is coming to visit...)
CAST: Woody Allen, Judy Davis, Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Greta Gerwig, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Flavio Parenti, Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi, Fabio Armiliato, Carol Alt, Antonio Albanese.
DIRECTOR: Woody Allen
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and some damn good reasons to keep Woody Allen out of Bella Italia - straight ahead...
IT'S LIKE THIS: You have to hand it to Woody Allen. Just when it appeared that contemporary American movie audiences were starting to tire of his bullshit - you know: the whining, the carping, the fretting, the sourpuss expression, the nagging - he took his bag of tricks and crossed the Atlantic to hightail it to Europe. There, he got a really, really strong second wind (or is it third or fourth wind?) and gave us a bunch of films that transcended the standard Woody Allen schtick. Basically, he exploited the shit out of England and gave us MATCH POINT, CASSANDRA'S DREAM, YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER, and SCOOP.
Then, when he got tired of all those pale people and piss-warm beer and rainy weather, he moved on to sunny Spain where he unleashed VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA. Then, he felt like getting his French Kiss on, and went to France to make MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. Afterwards, deciding he'd cavorted enough in the third sexiest nation (France) and second sexiest nation (Spain) in the world, he decided to go for Number One this time, baby! Yup... seriously fired up by his adventures in Francia and Espana, he decided to go for broke and film his next movie in Italy - if for no other reason than to probably ogle some serious eye candy for several months. I guess you could say Woody probably got a lot of, uh, woodies during the shoot.
Which brings us to TO ROME WITH LOVE, which, I guess, is Woody's answer to LOVE ACTUALLY - but given a uniquely Woody Allen spin. Which means a lot of people yapping and misunderstanding each other and whining and carping and generally making you wish slamming the heel of your palm into someone's nasal cavity weren't considered assault. Seriously... if any of these fuckers would just shut up for even a nanosecond, they would create a sudden vacuum of silence that would probably be actually seen from space. But this is a Woody Allen movie after all, and he is to overly-loquacious characters, as Michael Bay is to shots that last no longer than 2.3 seconds each. In other words: deal with it.
As with LOVE ACTUALLY, this movie follows several plot threads, each of them about people falling in love, falling out of love, falling in love all over again, then falling out of love again, then falling in love all over all over again - all the while yapping about it like it's something entirely new. Fucking please. Anyhow, our large group of characters include: (1) John (Alec Baldwin), a successful architect who lived in Rome in his twenties, and is now coming back after 25 years to visit again; (2) Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), an architecture student studying in Rome who meets and bonds with John; (3) Jerry (Woody Allen), whiny yapping fretting opera producer who is in town to attend his daughter's wedding to a smokin' hot Italian guy; (4) Hayley (Alison Pill), Jerry's aforementioned soon-to-be-betrothed daughter; (5) Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), Hayley's aforementioned smokin'-hot Italian fiancee; (6) Sally (Greta Gerwig), Jack's sweet and earnest fiancee; (7) Monica (Ellen Page), Sally's friend who comes to visit her and Jack in Rome - and immediately entrances Jack; (8) Phyllis (Judy Davis), Jerry's exasperated wife who must be some sort of saint to be able to put up with Jerry's bullshit; (9) Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato), Michelangelo's humble dad who turns out to have a killer tenor voice - which Jerry believes he can use to make Giancarlo an opera star with; (10) Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi), low-key dude from Northern Italy who has arrived in Rome with his wife - but then gets separated from her; (11) Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi), Antonio's aforementioned wife who quickly discovers that Rome is a fucking zoo; (13) Anna (Penelope Cruz), street-walking whore who, in a series of events so fucked-up it could only happen in a Woody Allen movie, ends up impersonating Milly to Antonio's snooty relatives; and last, but probably the least: (14) Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), simple working-class guy who, inexplicably, suddenly gets treated like he's Brad Pitt by the paparazzi and Rome in general.
Whew. Goddamn. That's a lot of characters to keep track of. Anyhow, who will end up with whom in this fucked-up tapestry of stories? Will John be able to teach Jack some valuable life (and love) lessons? Or will Jack follow his dick and go for Monica? Will Sally find out? What about Antonio and Milly? Will they ever find each other again? And will Milly find out that Anna, the whore, has been taking her place at family dinners? Will Leopoldo find out why he's suddenly being trailed by the paparazzi? Or will he not care and just soak up all that attention? Will Jerry succeed in transforming Giancarlo into a superstar opera tenor? Will Hayley marry Michelangelo? Or do their destinies lie elsewhere? And the most important question of all: what European capital will Woody Allen unleash his neuroses on next?
Who cares. Just make sure he gets the hell out of my Bella Italia for good.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: Earlier, we compared TO ROME WITH LOVE with LOVE ACTUALLY, somewhat facetiously. Taken at face value, both films share a few striking similarities: multiple love stories that intertwine, criss-cross, overlap, and merge with one another. They also have top casts who deliver strong performances across the board. Unfortunately, that's where their similarities end. While LOVE ACTUALLY was a droll but sincere and straightforward exploration of love in all of its different shapes and forms, TO ROME WITH LOVE is a wry look at love's ironies, its fleeting nature, and its ability to surprise - for good or bad. The title of the film and its setting, the Eternal City of Rome, belie Woody Allen's dryly comic approach to the stories.
The cast, as mentioned above, is in superior form across the board. Veterans like Alec Baldwin, Woody Allen, Judy Davis, and Penelope Cruz mesh well with up-and-comers and newcomers like Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, and Alison Pill. The Italian members of the cast also match their American counterparts, scene for scene, with Roberto Benigni, Flavio Parenti, Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi, and real-life opera tenor Fabio Armiliato making their own marks. Although the cast is uniformly good, the real standouts are Baldwin, Eisenberg, Page, Cruz, and Armiliato.
The main reason that TO ROME WITH LOVE doesn't rate as high as, say, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, MATCH POINT, or SCOOP (all from Allen's recent "European" oeuvre) is because, as sharply as the characters are played, none of them are "deep" enough for us to develop a real rooting interest in. This wasn't the case with the other films mentioned above, especially MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and SCOOP. The danger of films with ensemble casts, is that they run the risk of falling victim to what we like to call the "Jack Of All Trades Master Of None Syndrome." That is, you have a large group of colorful characters, but because there are so many of them, and we don't spend enough time with any one of them, we don't feel any real attachment to a single person.
LOVE ACTUALLY managed to side-step this pitfall with some smartly efficient character development and well-constructed scenes that made maximum dramatic impact with minimum of exposition and staging. Perfect examples include: (1) Karen (Emma Thompson) discovering her husband's (Alan Rickman) infidelity, (2) Juliet (Keira Knightley), discovering Mark's (Andrew Lincoln) secret love for her; and (3) Billy (Bill Nighy) professing his undying platonic love to his longtime loyal friend/supporter Joe (Gregor Fisher). These scenes established a strong rooting interest in us for the people involved because of their straightforward, emotional honesty.
TO ROME WITH LOVE, on the other hand, is more concerned with getting ironic laughs out of the "romantic" situations in its tapestry. More often than not, it succeeds, but at the same time, it curiously keeps us from warming completely to the characters. Which prevents it from fully ascending to the level of a good film (***1/2). Instead, despite a strong cast and game performances, it is merely a solidly above-average film (***). In the end, the difference between an above-average film and an outright good film is the presence of someone to really root for. TO ROME WITH LOVE gives us many entertaining characters and some beautiful Roman scenery but, ultimately, there is no one to really care for here. In the pantheon of Woody Allen's latest films, it is a bit behind the rest of the pack - which gave us at least one character to solidly get behind.
In short, it's not enough for you to make your movie clever. It also has to have some sort of emotional center and genuine sincerity. And TO ROME WITH LOVE, despite some strong elements, is sorely missing that.
