To Rome With Love: A hushed Bliss!
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Allen, Judy Davis, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig, Roberto Benigni
Rating: 3
Woody Allen's 'To Rome With Love' is an affection toward the city of Rome. The film deliver scenes through a series of semi-connected stories set in the Italian heart.
Allen plays Jerry, a self-doubting opera director visiting Rome with his wife (Judy Davis). They're in Rome to meet the fiance of their daughter (Alison Pill). Allen is not particularly pleased with his to be son in law, Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), and seems to make a point of mispronouncing his name. But when he overhears the young man's father (real-life opera tenor Fabio Armiliato) singing in the shower, he identifies a great tenor voice. All nerve breaks free when Jerry begs to record him on a demo tape. It doesn't work. The man can seem to sing only in the shower.
In a different story, Jesse Eisenberg plays Jack, a budding architect based in Rome with his girlfriend, Sally (Greta Gerwig). When her friend Monica (Ellen Page) comes to Rome on a visit, Sally unwisely asks her to move in. Monica soon turns a seductress. Alex Baldwin co-stars in this segment in a mystifying way, turns visible at will. Baldwin urgently warns Jack against Monica and tries to head off a young man's romantic carelessness.
The additional story begins with the perception that some people are famous for being famous. Roberto Benigni suddenly encounter an overnight fame and is followed everywhere by paparazzi, peace and escape is a strange world until he becomes normal again.
The best part by far involves newlyweds Antonio and Milly (Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi) who have arrived in Rome from a smaller Italian village for their honeymoon before he meets his affluent relatives to try and get a job. Instead, they're separated when she gets lost and loses her cell phone and a case of mistaken identity leads to him pretending a hooker named Anna (Penelope Cruz) is his new wife, while his real wife has a romantic interlude with a famous actor and a burglar.
For the most part, Allen doesn't end any of the four stories but the sum of all four stories still never adds up to the strength of one of Allen's full-length feature comedies. The film generates no particular excitement, but it provides the sort of pleasure (humor) Woody Allen seems able to generate over the years.
