To Rome with Love: Another Woody Allen Masterpiece

Woody Allen's movies are different. You sit down and if you expect to see the standard fictional piece that tries to imitate fiction you're in for a deception. Woody Allen is not your regular director. He wants his movies to be dfferent and in fact they all are.

After filming the outstanding Midnight in Paris he goes onto yet another city, Rome, and tells not one but four stories, each one with that does of surrealism that permeates his stories. They are not told one after the other but as though they were happening at the same time. 

In one Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni) is a common man with a common  life who suddenly becomes famous for no reason whatsoever and starts being chased down by papparazis and people in general regard him as someone important.

In the second, a couple of newlyweds Antonio and Milly  (Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi) arrive in Rome from their small town to meet with Antonio's rich family who have offered him a job. Milly decides to get ready going to a hair saloon but gets lost. Antonio is visited by a prositute called Ana (Penelope Cruz) who insists she has been sent to him and everything has already been paid. In despair Antonio has Ana pretend she is Milly while the real Milly accidentally meets the actor she idolizes and is about to cheat on Antonio.

In the third story John (Alec Baldwin) a famous architect returns to Rome where he lived when he was oung and when going back to where he used to stay meets Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) wo admires him. Jesse is a young man who is in rome with his girlfriend, Sally (Greta Gerwig) and both receive the visit of Monica (Ellen Page) with whom Jack will have an affair. Magically John begins appearing as Jack's conscience talking to him as a second voice in his head and making all kind of hilarious remarks about Jack's love situation.

In the fourth story Jerry (Woody Allen) is a retired producer  who has traveled to Rome with his wife to meet his daughter's fiancé. Jerry's daughter, Hayley, is getting married soon to Michelangelo, an Italian man she met in her summer vacations. Michelangelo's father, Giancarlo is great at singing opera when he is taking a shower (not out of it). Jerry who hates being retired stages an opera, Il Pagliaci, where Giancarlo appears always taking a shower on stage during the entire piece.

How the stories just get tangled and how they are just resolved explain that Time as a notion has little meaning in Allen´s works. Extraordinary things just happen to ordinary people and fun happens. that seems to be the premise of Allen´s movies. The plot and the photography are the two great plusses of this film though the acting does not let down either. Of course the director shows his hand everywhere. 

Allen loves his home city, New York, and most of his movies are based in that city but recently he has been producing these other movies , city-based stories, first Barcelona, then Paris and Rome. I wonder what he would happen if he continued this trend. I'd love to see stories based in London, Moscow or Athens. Only time will tell, and Woody Allen.

Five stars out of five for this one.