To Rome with Love

There has hardly been a year in the last four decades when Woody Allen has not released a new film. However, there was definitely a time when his films barely attracted any attention. His 2002 film Hollywood Ending has not been released in Germany to this day. However, the huge success of Match Point has propelled Allen's career to new heights, with 2011's Midnight in Paris being the highlight to date. With this charming comedy, Woody Allen not only achieved his greatest critical success in a long time, the film also became his most financially successful work ever. And so it is little wonder that expectations for his latest film, the episodic comedy To Rome with Love, are correspondingly high - so high that the film can't really live up to them.

Allen presents the audience with a very special look at life in the Eternal City. For instance, he follows young architecture student Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) through an emotional dilemma he faces when his girlfriend Sally (Greta Gerwig) invites her best friend, actress Monica (Ellen Page), to spend a few days in their shared apartment, and Jack immediately succumbs to the headstrong Monica's charms. Former opera director Jerry (Woody Allen) has entirely different problems when he discovers the greatest singing talent of his career in the father of his daughter's friend, a simple funeral director. But the unassuming man has no ambition to sing in public. He only pursues this passion in the shower. But Jerry won't let go of the idea of making this man big. Then maybe one day he will become as prominent as Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), a simple average man who from one day to the next enjoys immense popularity. He is constantly besieged by cameras, has to report in interviews about how he shaved in the morning and is adored by the most beautiful women - all this despite the fact that he has done nothing at all that would justify this media attention. And then there's shy Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi), who wants to introduce his newlywed wife Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) to his parents. But when she gets lost looking for a hairdresser in Rome and runs into a big movie star, while Antonio is literally blindsided at the hotel by the beguiling call girl Anna (Penélope Cruz), who got the room number wrong, when his parents suddenly appear in the doorway, the chaos is perfect. All in all, it's just another day in Rome.

After London, Barcelona and Paris, Woody Allen's cinematic tour of Europe now stops in Italy. However, Allen has brought his typical humor from New York again, trying again and again to incorporate European flair and Italian charm into the comedic action. And unfortunately, that doesn't work in all moments. So there are plot lines that work really well and are just wonderfully original and funny. This certainly includes the opera singer, who can only develop his talent in a very special way. Or the average guy who becomes a media star for no reason at all. Such a clever and at the same time charming side blow to our current pop culture, in which talentless docu-soap actors and casting show participants are stylized into big stars, has probably not been seen before.

Also Penélope Cruz provides some very amusing moments as a service provider in the horizontal trade, whereby she also gives the humor a very special sensual touch, which fits perfectly with the wonderful shots with which Allen has captured Rome. Amidst the lively goings-on, the occasionally cryptic plotline involving architect John (Alec Baldwin), who seems to have found his younger self in American architecture student Jack, feels somewhat colourless. When John, seemingly invisible to everyone else involved, comments on Jack's amorous flirting with Monica and tries to protect his young friend from the mistakes he once made himself as a young man, it's a nice touch at first, but comes across as increasingly strained and only mildly funny.

While the successful moments clearly outnumber the bad ones, and on balance also make To Rome with Love a very successful Woody Allen comedy. However, the hangers-on that are definitely present prevent this visually enchanting trip to Rome from being in the same league as Allen's more recent works Midnight in Paris or I See the Man of Your Dreams. For fans of the director nevertheless: absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp