The thematically or location-based anthology film tends to be a loose limbed, flighty
To Rome with Love
2012
Woody Allen
Sony Pictures Classics
Woody Allen, Penélope Cruz, Jesse Eisenberg
creature, a chance to sample the wares of multiple directors. Paris, je t’aime (2006) and New York, I Love You (2009), each linked by location and theme of love, provided stylistic nibbles of Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Salles, Yvan Attal, Mira Nair and many others. In his ragged To Rome with Love, Allen returns to the form of his 1989’s New York Stories, but skips the part where he shares directing duties with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. It’s lazy, frivolous filmmaking—To Rome With Love has about as much intent as a vacation—but in spurts, gives real pleasure.
Although love features in the title and crops up in varying degrees in three of the four unconnected stories, it’s not the theme. In fact, if there is a overarching theme, I missed it. Two of the stories feature aging and regrets, including the best, in which an architect named John (Alec Baldwin) takes a trip down memory lane in the neighborhood where he lived 30 years ago. One stars Penélope Cruz as a prostitute (oh, Woody, another one?) who insists her time has been purchased for an Italian newlywed whose wife just stepped out to get her hair done. He begs to differ. Then there’s a random entry, an amusing but nonsensical commentary about the vagaries of fame, which features Roberto Benigni as an average white collar worker who becomes an overnight celebrity for no reason at all. You’d have to stretch very hard to find the interconnectivity between them.
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