Love is the City is
an anthology film of six segments badly assembled. There is a theme of love
that underlies each segment in different and unique ways, but there is no
pattern or connection that makes this 'love' representative of love in Italy.
Without a unifying structure, we feel like poor Daffy Duck from Duck Amuck,
constantly subjected to the film's inexplicably changing tones. We give up
ultimately, disappointed and spurned.
This movie could've
left its happier, lighter moments for the first half, and the bleak, poignant
moments for the second. Or vice versa. Its abandonment of an overall rhythm
makes it damningly ineffectual. One of the film's directors (and these are
major Italian directors whose best films have been regarded among the finest in
world cinema) apprises us seconds before first the segment begins, that 'we
should not be expecting the generic Hollywood style of representation. This
movie shall not rouse our passion like a Marilyn Monroe flick'. I'd rather have
switched my DVD to Monroe's Seven Year Itch and be bewitched with her beauty
than watch this. Love in a city is sadly a passionless film, cold and colorless
as a whole; it's a modified version of the proverb 'Too many cooks spoil the
broth' - here, the six cooks or rather Masterchefs together create no broth!
Instead, each one
throws in his flavors, ignoring what the others are making. After the dishes
are made, there is a chaos in the kitchen because everybody has created
something highly dissimilar from the others: now how shall they serve this to
the hungry guests? One of the six 'Masterchefs', probably Carlo Lizzani,
nervously shows up and tells the guests just how 'different' this experience
shall be, because the ingredients include non-actors who give first-hand
account of their experience. He fingerpoints rival Hollywood offerings, blaming
them for being simple, straight and unmemorable. The guests looks on wide-eyed,
anticipating something challenging and unique.
Dish number one
enters. It's called 'Paid Love', and Carlo Lizzani has prepared it. The name
itself suggests that its got something to do with prostitutes. There's a
narrator here who takes his camera to desolate streets at night to film
streetwalkers. Many prostitutes play themselves as if they are being
interviewed extempore. Vallie is questioned about shoes, Tilde says she takes
ten cups of coffee everyday, another talks about being abandoned at a young
age. Anna, a harlot with a manly appearance, if filmed at home where we learn 'she'll
read Mickey Mouse before she goes to bed'. All the subjects occupy the centre
of the frame. The bleakness of their existence is captured well. Would've been
ironic had the interviewer himself used the services of the prostitute at the
end, but that's not what this film intends to show. It remains like a
documentary for the fifteen or so minutes it stays on screen.
The next dish is
brought out. There is a flurry of excitement among the guests when the name
Michelangelo Antonioni is heard. Slowly they see a couple of faces usher in and
stand in front of a huge wall. Another narrator introduces them as 'people who
had attempted suicide and were here to share their experience'. Raw stories of
unfulfilled love, of deceit are shared by the people, one after the other as
they relive their haunting experience. Many unsettling images come up, like
when one woman speaks of the moment when she had fainted after plunging into
the river, and as she speaks the image of the flowing water is captured as
though it's her that's floating. It's an eerie piece all in all.
Dish three is a
peppy one by Dinio Risi with waltzing, dancing, swinging, flirting and
wall-flowering guys and gals. That's more than an adequate description for the
piece. Dish four soon makes guests quiver with mad excitement as the name
'Fellini' is pronounced. This part includes a third-person view of the
narrator, a journalist who investigates marriage agencies to learn what people
are willing to do to get married. Led by sprightly little boys and girls to
Mrs. Cibele's office, our journalist, after a small talk with her husband,
tells Mrs.Cibele about a 'friend who suffers from a werewolf syndrome and can
only be cured if he gets married'. To the journalist's surprise (there's no
such friend, obviously), Mrs. Cibele agrees to find a girl for his friend and
gets him one without any difficulty. Later it's found that the girl is highly
impoverished and is desperate to marry anyone who can take good care of her.
Dish five, the most
elaborate one (not in terms of content but rather in terms of duration) deals
with an impoverished hapless mother's love for her child which reunites the two
ultimately, inspite of her attempts to abandon him. A haunting score is heard
often, as if angels from the heaven above are lamenting this woman's misery and
pathos. But there's little for us to care for this woman or this child to even
bother sympathising with them. Dish six is sexyy, perky and quirky, capturing
pretty, glowy busty women from far and up-close, and the never-ceasing dirty
male gaze.
Each dish has
moments but it is when the six (or seven) 'Masterchefs' or directors - Lizzani,
Antonioni, Risi, Fellini, duo Zavattini and Masseni and Lattuada - announce
'That's a wrap! Thank you for coming to the show', that the guests (we,
obviously) begin wondering "What exactly have you given us?" The sum
effect of the six segments is zilch, and that's what makes Love in The City a
devoid-of-director's-passion fruitless watch.
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