To Rome with Love movie review (2012)
The best of the stories in "To Rome With Love" involves Allen himself, as Jerry, a self-doubting opera director visiting Rome with his wife (Judy Davis, in her fifth film with Woody). They're in Rome to meet the fiance their daughter (Alison Pill) plans to marry. He is not particularly pleased with the fiance, Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), and seems to make a point of mispronouncing his name. But when he overhears the young man's father (real-life opera tenor Fabio Armiliato) singing in the shower, he knows a great tenor voice when he hears one.
His future in-law is an undertaker. Jerry begs to record him on a demo tape. It doesn't work. The man can seem to sing only in the shower. This is the sort of zany shuffle that sidesteps the conventional set-up.
In another story, Jesse Eisenberg plays Jack, a would-be architect based in Rome with his girlfriend, Sally (Greta Gerwig). When her friend Monica (Ellen Page) comes to Rome on a visit, Sally unwisely asks her to move in, since Jack would never have eyes for another woman. Untrue, since Monica, who seems drab on first sight, uncoils into a seductress.
Alex Baldwin co-stars in this segment in a rather ambivalent way. Able to materialize at will, he urgently warns Jack against Monica and tries to head off a young man's romantic carelessness. This character requires the sort of magic realism that Allen is quite willing to allow himself.
Another episode: Antonio and Milly (Alessandro Tiberian and Alessandra Mastronardi) are newlyweds visiting Rome so his family can meet her. But they become separated one day, she has an encounter with her favorite movie star (Antonio Albanese), and he becomes the innocent recipient of a hooker (Penelope Cruz) sent as a gift to someone else. His relatives find them in a compromising situation, and he desperately tries to pass her off as his wife.
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