To Rome With Love

There are two more storylines left in the box of notions: One involves a naive provincial couple visiting Rome who get mixed up in a day of mistaken identities and potential infidelities: The man (Alessandro Tiberi) winds up passing off a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) as his new bride to his family, while the woman (Alessandra Mastronardi) finds herself in a dalliance with a suave movie star (Antonio Albanese). The other features Allen himself as Jerry, a retired opera director whose daughter (Alison Pill) is engaged to an Italian (Flavio Parenti). When he hears his future son-in-law?s father (Fabio Armiliato) singing Verdi in the shower, Jerry is transported, and insists that the poor man, who wants nothing more than to practice his lifelong vocation as an undertaker, allow himself to be promoted as the latest operatic sensation. To me, both these stories felt like unfinished sketches; similar to the Pisanello plotline, they contain ideas about fame, anonymity, success, and failure that are never fully developed or explored. (Though the opera subplot does culminate in a ludicrous staging of Pagliacci at La Scala that makes the whole thing worthwhile.)

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