TO ROME WITH LOVE (R) It’s probably best to get this out of the way: To Rome with Love isn’t Midnight in Paris. You wouldn’t be scolded, however, for making that assumption at the beginning. Cinematographer Darius Khondji’s camera captures Rome in much the same way he filmed Paris in the earlier movie. It’s the well known tourist areas—the Colosseum, the Piazza di Spagna, the Trevi Fountain—that are on display, romantically alluring and familiar to people around the world. But when Allen deviates from the mundane, the detours lead to some delightfully absurd places.
To Rome with Love is comprised of four storylines. In one, a successful architect, John (Alec Baldwin), wanders down a side street and meets an architecture student, Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), who’s living in the city with his girlfriend Sally (Greta Gerwig). John becomes Jack’s advisor, something the younger man desperately needs when Sally’s attractive yet maddeningly pretentious friend Monica (Ellen Page) comes to visit. In another one, Hayley (Alison Pill), an American, falls in love with an Italian man, Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti). Hayley’s parents, Phyllis (Judy Davis) and Jerry (Woody Allen), come to meet Michelangelo and his parents. Jerry’s a retired opera director and takes an interest in Michelangelo’s father (Fabio Armiliato), who’s blessed with natural singing talent, but with a twist. Another plotline involves a boring, middle-class businessman, Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), who inexplicably becomes a national celebrity, having his most banal activities reported as major news. And in the movie’s most complicated and farcical tale, a young married couple from the country journeys to Rome to start a new life. The wife (Alessandra Mastronardi) gets lost in the city searching for a hair salon, subsequently getting seduced by a big-headed movie star (Antonio Albanese), and the meek husband (Alessandro Tiberi) gets involved with an overripe prostitute, Anna (Penélope Cruz), and is forced to pass her off as his bride when relatives come calling.
This is the sort of cinematic trifle Allen can make with ease. There’s nothing particularly enlightening here. Many of the jokes and insights feel predictable: In-laws drive you crazy, rural folk are naïve bumpkins, prostitutes have hearts of gold, celebrity culture is vapid, love is blind, and communists are humorless. The awkwardly lovely Gerwig has little to do either, and Page is miscast as the “propeller” who will destroy Jack. Nevertheless, Allen and the rest of his cast make it go down smoothly, like sipping a refreshingly sweet acqua e menta on a hot summer day.
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