I didn’t like Com’è Bello Far L’amore and Italian critics didn’t either but we disagree when it comes to why this movie with the cast you want to love is so, so, so bad. So bad.
One reviewer made a comment that made me want to get on a plane, fly to wherever she was and set her straight. This movie, contrary to what she apparently thinks, did not fail because it was too accommodating to American comedies.
Au contraire.
This very convoluted comedy starring Fabio De Luigi, Claudia Gerini and Filippo Timi ( my gay guy crush ) failed because Italians, on the whole, do not get the concept of a good romantic comedy.
The story is so stupid I feel stupid even summarizing it. A married couple, Andrea and Giulia, who’ve gotten a little boring in the bedroom get a visit from Giulia’s (Claudia Gerini) college friend, Max, played by Filippo Timi. Max is famous, a fame earned from being a “porn divo” in America, and is a somewhat self-taught sex expert. When Giulia confides to Max that her sex life needs help, he attempts to help spice things up with his hours and hours of experience. Giulia and Andrea’s son is busy with his own romantic issues and their best friends, recently divorced are still hooking up for hot sex, better at being lovers than being married.
There’s a lot of secret videotaping, mistakenly showing the videotapes to work associates, and a weird, sexy, and yet still creepy musical number at the end in which Giulia strips at Max’s new night club.
I didn’t believe Claudia and Andrea as a couple. I didn’t believe Max as a porn star or a college friend, and I didn’t believe that the relationships between any of them made any sense.
And please don’t blame American movies for this failure. There are plenty of stupid, unfunny American comedies, but Com’è Bello Far L’amore is not funny in a very uniquely Italian way. It goes over the top, with raunchy humor, with sex, and with clichés about romance that American comedies do sometimes, but not the rom-coms.
Even the worst American rom-coms get that they need a few key elements that include a young attractive couple and palpable sexual tension. Com’è Bello Far L’amore tried it with a middle-aged couple and weak stabs at kooky sex farce. Inexplicably filmed with 3D technology, maybe it would have been better had I had the opportunity to see it in the 3D way that it was intended, but I doubt it.
I wouldn’t be so offended by this movie if it hadn’t wasted such valuable talent. Filippo Timi, who was stunning in Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere, and Claudia Gerini, still a knockout over 40 and a great comedienne deserve better at this stage in their careers.
Director: Fausto Brizzi
Writers: Fausto Brizzi, Marco Martani
Stars: Fabio De Luigi, Claudia Gerini and Filippo Timi
I Love Italian Everything 