After a long while, we’re headed back to Miss Cleo’s well. Now, she’s worked some magic with her picks in the past, and even had some success with Woody Allen, but she expressed some slight misgivings to me about To Rome with Love. Said misgivings are here acknowledged, but I seek to press on regardless. You never know, right?
Like other Allen fare, this film is an ensemble piece comprising four not-really-intertwining stories (indeed, the only connection between them is the city of Rome). One story follows a young betrothed couple, who met when she visited Italy on vacation, as their respective parents meet for the first time. In the process, her father tries to get his father to take his erstwhile sole shower-based opera singing to the masses. The second story follows a small-town Italian couple who want to move to Rome. While visiting, they become separated; she gets lost and meets her favorite actor, while he gets mistakenly visited by a hooker, who he must then pass off as his wife in front of his family. The third story follows a love triangle between a pair of students living in Rome and her friend from the States, who happens to be extremely popular with the guys and is fresh off of a breakup (if you see where I’m going). The final story follows an otherwise normal Roman who gets unexpectedly (both to him and to us) swept up into a life of fame, only to lose it just as suddenly.
As a whole, I don’t find this to be one of Allen’s stronger works. Perhaps if the stories were interconnected in some tangible way, it would have made a stronger impression, but they are, for the most part, kinda weak versions of familiar Allen plots. They do point out the foibles of big-city folks and the effects a major city has on its populace and visitors, but they’re lacking palpable panache and substance. Interestingly, each story has its own strengths: In the first, it’s the sassy back-and-forths between Allen and Judy Davis (I still enjoy her turn in the criminally underrated The Ref), playing Allison Pill’s American parents. Gotta love it when a psychiatrist quips “Yeah, yours is the only mind with three ids.” (It’s funnier in context, I swear.) The second story, a short remake of Fellini’s The White Sheik, is propelled by Penelope Cruz, who plays the aforementioned hooker with plenty of Mediterranean zest and sass. The final story works by initially grounding the otherwise overly-physical Roberto Benigni, allowing his innate comedy to work without constant manic fits and gesticulations.
The third story is the strongest for me, as it is the most visually interesting. Throughout, the couple (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Greta Gerwig, Miss Cleo stalwarts) act out their thoughts as though partly explaining things to us, all while being strangely forward with the pros and cons of a relationship with friend Ellen Page. Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin, playing a famous architect vacationing in Rome and meeting up with Eisenberg, pops in now and again to comment on things, seemingly in Eisenberg’s head, though he occasionally interacts with the others. While entertaining on its own merits, I like the deeper implications: that Baldwin is actually Eisenberg’s future self reliving a past event he greatly regrets. Once this idea set in, it reframed the earlier scenes fairly interestingly, providing some welcome depth to an otherwise shallow story.
Indeed, it’s only when you think about the surrounding context that the stories take on any significant meaning. Indeed, the stories aren’t really the important aspects of the film: it’s Rome that matters. Much like New York and Los Angeles provide not only a backdrop for stories but also a unique context and influence, so to does Rome, according to Allen. American audiences are used to the Eternal City as being only a signifier of her ancient past or a fancy and exotic vacation destination, so exhibiting Rome’s effect on her people in the same way as, say, New York has been shown to do for decades is a nice twist on things. It’s a modern, large metropolis, home to a number of characters that are just as touched by the city as they touch her. In fact, the film likely only works this way on American audiences, given our preoccupation with domestic cities in this way and our mental preconceptions of Rome.
Gotta hand it to both Miss Cleo and Woody Allen, I didn’t expect to get this intellectual about an otherwise slightly bland serio-comedy. For me, much of the humor didn’t land (aside from the rampant sarcasm), and the stories didn’t do too much for me on their own faces, but the collection, taken with the above thoughts, presented me with a decent amount of unexpected entertainment. Hats off all around.
Allusions of Grandeur 