To Rome with Love
...is a soon to be released film that runs deep with situational complexities among a seemingly unrelated assortment of characters who come to know one another through unique situations. Taking place in the self titled city that boasts of allure from it’s cultural prominence, scenic grandeur and serendipitous elements, Rome provides a critical backdrop to the saga that envelops the eight leading roles who find irony coming at them in all directions.
Director Woody Allen plays a main part of Jerry a professional opera man who never realized the success he had envisioned earlier in his life is traveling with his daughter Hayle(Alison Pill) to meet the parents of her soon to be husband Michelangelo who is a young intelligent Americanized Italian with a somewhat edgy personality. Upon the return to his home country to introduce his family to his fiancée’s parents including the mother Phylis(Judy Davis), Jerry picks up on the irisistable singing talent that Michelangelo’s father, Giancarlo, possess but has never made anything of aside from personal enjoyment. So with most of the operatic career of Jerry having gone unfulfilled, he leaps at the chance to bring the talent of his daughter’s soon to be father in law to light by encouraging Giancarlo to make something of a new found ability for himself. Michelangelo finds no reason to harness the opportunity of his simple, complacent father into a singing phenomenon under the guises of Jerry persist, so an unsettled dynamic ensues amongst these individuals.
If to say that the entire movie isn’t an outright non stop comedy, one of the more humorous twists in the plot is that of Antonio(Alessandro Tiberi) and his new wife Milly(Allessandra Mastonardi). The couple has just moved to Rome under the conditions that they may be able to secure a comfortable salaried job with the help from his local relatives who he tries exceptionally hard to impress. As part of the bid to market himself highly enough to win the favor of his distance relatives, Antonio ridiculously gets Anna(Penelope Cruz) to pretend to be his wife after an awkward moment had prompted him to introduce Anna as his newly wed. The scenes aren’t shy in capturing the stunning flare that Cruz’s looks bring to the audience as she appears regularly throughout the movie.
The love scenarios just keep finding their presence as another plot unfolds with a young architectural student, Jack, who falls into the good graces of John(Alec Baldwin), himself an architect who is currently on vacation from California with his girlfriend Sally(Greta Gerwig). Sally prepares an introduction of someone she knows named Monica(Ellen Page) who also is traveling and would maybe interested in making a date with Jack. The fast paced demeanor and invigorating personality of Monica is likely to be too much for Jack and warned about by John but this doesn’t relent the pursuit that the young student seems convinced to go after.
And what’s more is the story of Leopoldo, a common citizen of Rome who has little or nothing to celebrate, but suddenly finds himself to be a huge focus of the Paparazzi media. Not knowing or caring to know why, he simply revels in the excitement of it all and enjoys the financial incentives that accompany his new found fame.
Finding the common items that strews these stories together is nearly as intricate as the myriad subplots that take place throughout the film. Catch the trailer of this edge of your seat tear jerking comedy before the film hits theaters in the next few months.