Ellen Page and Jesse Eisenberg in “To Rome With Love.”
By Paul Goldfinger, editor @Blogfinger
Woody Allen’s latest film, “To Rome With Love,” opened to widespread distribution on July 6 and is currently playing locally. As a Woody Allen fan, I enjoyed this film. As usual, there were the wonderful scenes of a gorgeous city—in this case, Rome. You can’t help but see the similarity to his last (2011) movie–the hugely successful “Midnight in Paris.” In addition, the musical score has a variety of jazz, romance and nostalgia.
One of the soundtrack songs (below) has that old fashioned quality which you can hear in his earlier work, such as “Radio Days” and “Sweet and Lowdown.” This song, called “Non dimenticar le mie parole” (Tr—Don’t forget my words), is performed by Emilio Livi and the Trio Lescano (R) in 1937.
“To Rome with Love” covers many Woody themes such as relationships, adultery, psychiatry, music (opera), fleeting fame, romance and sex. The film is unusual in that there are four intertwined distinct short stories that are unrelated, other than by the Rome setting, and each one is fun, although they don’t always work.
I especially liked Penelope Cruz as a wise hooker in a tight red miniskirt, Roberto Benigni, who won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Life,” who inhabits the role of an ordinary guy who suddenly becomes famous, Ellen Page (from “Juno”), who plays a beautiful and hot actress who is a pretentious phony, and Woody Allen himself, who acts in his first film since 2006. Woody plays his familiar neurotic comedic character, who is looking to revive his career by discovering a new opera star who only sounds good in the shower.
If you like Woody Allen, you will want to see this film and appreciate it for its usual miracles: music, cinematography, setting, skilled casting, original writing, wonderful characters, funny lines and goofy situations.
From “To Rome With Love” here is Emilio Livi and the Trio Lescano, who sound a bit like the Chipmunks: