Review of To Rome with Love (2012) by Clarisesamuels — 27 Jan 2013

This film is a little frustrating because followers of Woody Allen will wonder how to categorize it. Is it a romantic romp or a surreal critique of society? If a critique of society, this is Allen's society, and as always he is preoccupied with romance, the alienation of the artist, the elusive pursuit of scholarly excellence, and his own mortality.

We have four romantic vignettes, the most entertaining of which is a young Italian couple, newlywed, who become separated for a day and absurdly end up cheating on each other on their honeymoon. The young wife is seduced by a movie star she has always admired, having watched him filming on the streets of Rome, and the young husband is seduced by a beautiful hooker, played by Penelope Cruz.

Even this vignette is exaggerated and wearisome, but it is the best of the four and makes a stab at examining the essential nature of fidelity. Roberto Benigni, in another vignette plays Leopoldo Pisanello, a married, hard-working father of two who one day walks out his door and is suddenly famous for no reason.

Journalists swarm him and want to know what he ate for breakfast. He is tortured and plagued by the media attention, and he just wants peace and quiet. But then, Leopoldo, who like Allen is a skinny, scrawny, average-looking guy, begins to enjoy the benefits of celebrity.

When in bed with other women, he worries about being a married man. "Don't worry, Mr. Pisanello, the rules don't apply to you--you are special," he is told by a fan. That line would be of little consequence in another film, but in a Woody Allen film, it takes on new dimensions.

When the media attention disappears as mysteriously as it arose, Leopoldo sighs that if he has to choose between being a celebrity and a poor unknown, it's better to be a celebrity. Unfortunately, Leopoldo never comprehends that the lack of substance behind his overblown celebrity constitutes the worst form of philosophical inauthenticity.

In a third vignette, Alec Baldwin plays a voice of conscience telling the young Jesse Eisenberg, who is acting like the young Woody Allen, not to fall for Monica (Ellen Page), because she is a superficial, petty intellectual and worse--she's an actress, which means she is flighty, promiscuous, and unreliable, if not downright ditsy.

Baldwin is always there making comments in the background, yet he is strangely invisible, one of the plot devices indicating the film is supposed to be magical realism, with surreal elements, although it flits back and forth indecisively about its genre, as it does about its plot.

Allen appears playing an American dad in Rome, and Judy Davis, an old-time member of Allen's entourage, is his wife. The fourth vignette is Alison Pill's role as a tourist who meets a gorgeous Italian stallion at the Trevi Fountain.

There is arguably a fifth vignette about an opera singer who can only perform in the shower, therefore the shower stall is put on the stage so that the populace can hear this angelic voice, no matter what it takes.

How do all of these vignettes tie together? They don't. But they all take place in Rome, the Eternal City, whose perpetuity is somehow supposed to make all of this cohere, and needless to say, it doesn't.

(The musical score, which is intended to contribute to the Roman ambience, is annoying.) Nevertheless, the film is vintage Woody Allen, and if you're a fan who wonders what Allen had for breakfast, you'll wonder what he had for breakfast the day he sat down to write this screenplay.