I’d forgotten how much I liked Manuale d’Amore.
I hadn’t thought about it or its sequel (Manuale D’amore 2) for a long time and then I saw that they are making yet another, Manuale D’amore 3 and that Robert De Niro is going to be in it. I wonder if this is a trilogy or something – could this one be “The Return of the Manual Writer”?
I’ve seen 1 and 2 – 1 is better than 2 – and they are movies that are broken up into segments that tell stories about couples and their varies stages in relationships. It reminded me of the the TV show from the 70s, The Love Boat – remember that show? You’ve probably at least seen reruns of it on TV Land. Every week there were three or four vignettes about couples falling in love on a cruise ship, always with very trite and overly sentimental storylines, neatly wrapped up and “happily ever aftered” by the show’s end. If you are unfamiliar, it’s one of those “so bad it’s good” shows – like Gilligan’s Island.
Tonight I pulled out Manuale D’amore, the first one, and decided to watch it again, expecting to be rolling my eyes a lot. I’m not sure why I remembered it like I did. First off, it’s funny in the way it’s supposed to be, not in the Gilligan’s Island way. I found myself laughing out loud right away at Tommaso, who was job hunting and lying about his resume. Manuale D’amore couples aren’t made for TV cartoon characters played by washed up actors like on the Love Boat. I must have been thinking of some other movie.
Manuele D’amore wouldn’t ever have won any David di Donatello awards but it’s not a fluffy farce either. It has lots of good acting with Carlo Verdone, Margherita Buy, Silvio Muccino, Jasmine Trinca, and Sergio Rubini (to name a few) all playing one half of a couple in transition.
My favorite part is the second with Margherita Buy and her real life ex-husband Sergio Rubini. They are just sick to death of each other and in serious need of marriage counseling. She tries to open up to him and she suggests they start doing things together, like taking a dance class from some fire dancers they’ve just seen perform – he looks at her thoughtfully and then says, “When you talk, you really scare me, Barbara.” And one night she’s watching him having dinner and he asks her what she’s thinking. She hesitates, and then tells him, “I’m thinking that you are really disgusting when you eat.”
Other reviewers have called it “cutesy” but I have to disagree. I think that the way Italian’s tell a love story is very different from how Americans tell one. I’m trying hard not to generalize here, but I find Italian movies to be way more free when they talk about love – it’s more passionate and less ironic. They’ll joke about relationships but not about love. Love has a capital “L” in Italian, and I think that kind of intensity can seem almost foolish and maybe even a little overdone to Americans who seem to want more sexual tension. We seem to want characters taking a very long time to admit their love for each other but Italians are too eager for it to wait. What seems melodramatic to us seems more real to Italy.
Jasmine Trinca’s character, Giulia, says “Io non ho mai baciato nessuno per sbaglio” (I’ve never kissed anybody by accident.) I think she speaks for a lot of characters in Italian movies, and maybe people in real life in Italy. They’re not messing around with this love stuff. And they don’t really seem to need the manual.
I Love Italian Everything 