(USA/Italy/Spain, 112 min.)
Written and directed by Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope
Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page, Alison Pill.
After thirty years in New York, Woody Allen has been quite
the traveller. He’s gone all over Europe the past few years, and he’s nary
missed a beat. Woody went to London in 2005 and made a career comeback with Match Point. He visited the city again
in Scoop (2006) and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010).
The latter films proved lots of fun, but, much like the earliest visit to a
foreign land, the first trip remains the most memorable.
The Woodman went to Spain in 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and struck gold again. The greatest stop
on Allen’s whirlwind adventure, though, is surely last year’s Midnight in Paris, which is a truly
enchanting tale that ranks among Allen’s best and most inspired work. After the
greatness of Midnight in Paris (my #1 film of 2011), it therefore pains me to say that Woody seems a little tuckered
out as he reaches the end of his European blitz with To Rome with Love.
This year’s Allen film does not mark the director’s first
trip to Italy. If you’ll recall, Allen’s under-rated and under-seen 1996
musical Everyone Says I Love You
featured Allen singing amongst the canals of Venice with Julia Roberts and
Goldie Hawn. Everyone mostly takes
place in New York, though, so few credit it as the start to Allen’s Eurotrip.
To Rome with Love
features some of the observations of Italian life that make Everyone Says I Love You such a winner. Italy
is a ripe, romantic country that is full of the arts, cultural, history, and
vibrancy that form the essential core of the Allen oeuvre. The eccentric maze
of the Venetian streets offers a farce that plays out dandily in the
misadventures of Rome, too, in one of
the film’s best scenes. However, it’s mostly the piquant bit of Italian sexiness
that tinged Allen’s tongue in Venice that inspires much of his trip to Rome.
The film offers an exhaustive ensemble cast that plays upon
various aspects of Italian culture in four cross-cut storylines. Even in the
film’s introduction to these stories does it seem like To Rome with Love has more material than it needs. The film begins
with a direct address from a traffic cop – a nice Allen touch – as he tells the
audience how much they will love the sights and sounds of Rome. He then
introduces one storyline about an American tourist named Hayley, played by
Alison Pill (aka Zelda Fitzgerald in Midnight
in Paris), who stumbles upon Michelangelo, a sexy local Roman played by
Flavio Parenti (I am Love) as she is
lost within the streets. Hayley and Michelangelo hit it off and have a
whirlwind summer romance, and the primer for their story ends with the
introduction of Hayley’s parents (Woody Allen and Judy Davis) as they fly into
Rome to meet her. The traffic cop then briskly rambles off the other three
storylines as quickly and erratically as an Italian drives through rush hour.
Like most trips, To
Rome with Love proves the perils of travelling with a large group. Although
each of the three stories is funny and endearing in its own way, the film is
overdrawn and overloaded. The storyline with Roberto Benigni’s character feels wholly
redundant, for it could have been summed up in one or two scenes about the
legacy of the paparazzi in Italy and the frivolity of celebrity, both of which
are essentially covered in the subplot with Allen’s character and Michelangelo’s
father (tenor Fabio Armiliato), who turns out to be a star opera singer in the
shower. Similarly, with so many characters, it seems that there are many stars
with little to do. The return of Judy Davis in an Allen film is an event in
itself, but she is reduced to psychoanalysis and background noise. Greta Gerwig
is tragically wasted in the love triangle storyline with Jesse Eisenberg and
Ellen, which is especially unfortunate because her natural neuroses and lively
energy makes her the ideal candidate for an Allen film amongst the younger cast
members. Page, however, is gratingly annoying, but gets oodles of screen time.
On the other hand, there are plenty of worthy attractions in
the sizable cast. Alec Baldwin is lots of fun as the little devil on
Eisenberg’s shoulder. Ditto Penélope Cruz in her second outing as one of Allen’s
eccentric and sexually liberated ladies. The fast-talking, hand-gesturing Italian
cast members are also a perfect fit for the zaniness of Woody’s dialogue,
especially Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi as a pair of provincial
newlyweds.
It’s often easier to nitpick about the cons of a foreign
place, so one should not overlook all the fine points that Allen brings out in Rome. He imbibes every storyline with
the palpable eroticism, sexiness, and romance of Italian culture. Each vignette
offers a fun story of travellers who indulge a bit too much in the allure of
Rome, which is probably played out best in the Italian-language storyline
featuring Cruz’s saucy hooker and the prudish newlyweds played by Tiberi and Mastronardi.
Likewise, the glowing cinematography by Darius Khondji oozes sex and captures
the postcard perfect scenery of Rome in arousing soft light.
The downfall of To
Rome with Love may simply be its status as the follow-up to Midnight in Paris. With Midnight in Paris Allen seemed to
articulate most successfully all the anxieties and ideas that he has grappled
with throughout his career. The city of Paris itself arguably offers the most
inspired setting for his work, not to mention the greatest counterpoint to his
nostalgic-laden Manhattan-set films. Rome offers an ideal setting for a light
romantic comedy, and To Rome with Love is
surely that, but nothing more. It’s fun and mostly satisfying, but it’s simply
a limp noodle compared to the dish that Allen served up in Paris.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
To Rome with Love is currently playing in Ottawa at The Bytowne,
the Empire Kanata, and Silver City Gloucester.
Photos by Philippe Antonello (c) Gravier Productions, Inc., Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
