To Rome with Love

To Rome with Love is a romantic comedy released created and staring Woody Allan in 2012 and i was reminded of Three Coins in a fountain in which disconnected individuals embark on relationship after converging on one tourist attraction, The Trevi Fountain. In this instance three women are all working in Rome dreaming of romance with an Italian.

In the first story Hayley is a forward young American who allows herself to be picked up by a pro bono lawyer after asking for directions during her summer stay in the city on her own. The father of the Italian young man is a mortician and when her parents, the father is Woody Allen flies to Italy to meet the young man and his parents, Allan hears the father, Giancarlo singing an opera aria in the shower while cleaning up after a say’s work.

Allan is an unsuccessful Opera Director who like to use experimental staging which does not always goes down well with the audience. He sees the discovery of Giancarlo has his final shot at creating a lasting legacy but then finds that the man can only sing well in the shower and this leads him to creating the staging of Pagliacci incorporating shower with his direction slammed by the singing praised. However Giancarlo decides that he prefers the life of a mortician with his family and having been given the once in a lifetime opportunity. The young couple have divided loyalties and break up, reunite and all ends well.

Antonio is an Italian from the country who comes to Rome with his new wife because his sophistries uncles have offered to set him up in business. His wife, Milly, goes out for a hair do when she cannot be accommodated at short notice in the hotel and gets lost eventually coming across a film being shot starring an actor she idolizes. He is a notorious womaniser and unsuspecting Milly agrees to return to his hotel after a meal where he is held up but an attractive young hotel thief and the trio are then interrupted by the actor’s wife accompanied by a detective and hotel security in the correct belief that eh ahs taken yet another young woman back to the his room. Quickly witted Milly gets into bed with the hotel thief while the actor hides in the closest/bathroom and the wife and hotel staff go off fully of apologies for disturbing the young couple. The goes off appreciate and Milly is also appreciative of the hotel thief finding herself in close proximity in bed and almost naked.

Meanwhile an increasingly anxious husband as the hour for meeting up with his relatives for a meal and a reception with potential business associates approaches is visited by an attractive prostitute who has been sent to his room by mistake. When the relatives call early to his room he has no alternative but to pass her off as his wife and she skilled in relationships with strangers does an excellent job although problems arise at the reception when she recognises many of her regular clients. They lunch at the same restaurant where the actor has taken his wife and this upsets the husband who later admits to the prostitute that he was a virgin when he married. She teaches him some love lessons in the shrubbery which later he uses to good effect when his wife returns, they make up and make love before returning to the countryside rejecting the lifestyle of the Eternal city. The prostitute is played by the adorable Penélope Cruz

Leopold lives the average life of a city worker with his wife and two children and where the highlight of the day is admiring the young secretary to his boss at work. Inexplicably he appears to have been selected at random by a TV station to become the latest personality where his every activity is watched and commented on and where he suddenly finds himself adored by the general public, offered the best tables at restaurants with a waiting list, importuned to have sex with by attractive stranger including one two in a bed, promoted by his boss as a manager with the secretary giving herself to him. However he hates the constant attention and longs for a quiet life with his family so at first when the Paparazzi find someone to follow he is pleased but then he realises that Pandora’s box has been opened and he misses all the attention and special privileges.

In the fourth story a well known architect John played by Alec Baldwin is visiting Rome with his family and goes on a personal walk of rediscovering to where he lived thirty years before and encounters a contemporary young American architect and his wife who happens to live in the same apartment and where the wife offers a home to am emotional female friend who has broken up with her latest boyfriend. John warns his contemporary about he dangers of having the young woman stay with them and then acts as a kind of inner voice to young man as the girl comes, identifies with the young man and proceeds to seduce him with her ways.

It is never made clear if this is what happened to John in the past and various other explanations have been suggested for what I regard as the lest successful of the four tales. Fortunately young woman plated by Ellen Page finds another passion and the previous happy marriage fo the young couple survives. The films beings and ends with a real traffic policeman directing the traffic at the centre of Rome who sees all the life that happens from his position and from his home in the city centre. The film is entertaining, perceptive about many aspect of human nature and inclinations and at times funny.