Review: ‘To Rome With Love’

Woody Allen’s latest is not so much a love letter to Rome as a nod to the great films and actors of Italian cinema. Unfortunately the references are often so oblique, only someone with a healthy knowledge of Italian classics would pick up on them, thus making To Rome With Love much less entrancing than last year’s Midnight in Paris.

Multiple stories thread through the streets of Rome. A young American girl stops a nice-looking Italian man to ask directions to the Trevi Fountain. Within minutes theirs is a full blown romance, and it’s not long before they’re engaged. Mom and Dad are summoned to meet the potential in-laws, but this meeting does not go well. Woody Allen’s reluctantly retired music producer becomes enchanted by his son-in-law’s father’s singing in the shower and shoves the unwilling performer into the spotlight, with disastrous results.

In another thread a young American architect finds himself torn between two very different women and a voice in his head argues with him as he struggles to decide which, if either, is the best for him.

In a twist on ‘the other woman’, a young Italian couple on their honeymoon become separated; the wife winding up with an older movie star while her husband struggles to impress business associates with a prostitute who stumbled into his room accidentally.

The final thread deals with the idea of celebrity, as an everyman (played by Roberto Begnini) finds himself suddenly famous for no reason at all.

Rome looks beautiful and there are some wonderful performances, most notably from Judy Davis as the psychiatrist wife who analyses her husband mercilessly.

While not as good as Allen’s best, To Rome With Love is fast paced and fun. But there are too many ideas and stories to be fully fleshed out in a film of this length, which makes the film a much more superficial experience than I suspect Allen intended it to be. There are a lot of wonderful references too, but most fly by to quickly to be noticed.

5/10