AGES OF LOVE (MANUALE D’AM3RE)

Italy, 2010, 125 minutes, Colour.
Robert de Niro, Monica Bellucci, Ricardo Scarmarcio, Michele Placido.
Directed by Giovanni Veronese'

Robert de Nero in an Italian film – and speaking Italian as well as English – and with Monica Bellucci. Must be something special. No, not exactly.

This is the third film in a series called, in Italy, Manuale d’Amore. (Hence the title, Manuale d' Am3re.) If this is a manual for love, we are in a sorry state. Rather, this is a series of stories which take up issues of love or, in this film, issues of sexuality and betrayal.

During the screening, a word came into my mind, ‘slightweight’, even less significant than ‘lightweight’.

The first Age of Love is ‘Youth’ although it is about a young, ambitious lawyer, engaged to a vivacious young woman, who goes to the provinces to persuade an elderly couple to take a payout on their house which is the middle of land intended for an exclusive golf club. He allows himself (pretty easily and quickly, in fact) to be seduced by the local vamp. Will he repent? Will his fiancée forgive him? A story of the Italian roving eye which is too easily taken for granted.

The second story (Middle Age) concerns a vain TV announcer, married with a daughter (rather smugly obnoxious these two) who is stalked and allows himself (again too easily and quickly) to be seduced, with some dire comic consequences in terms of the action of the story, but not for him when he discovers the pathology of his stalker.

Robert de Niro and Monica Bellucci are in the third story. He is a widowed academic living in Rome. She is the daughter of the buildings caretaker – and has what is called a colourful past. The stars give their best but, once again, the love story (a bit more genuine this time) is really not much of a story.

‘Slightweight’ comes to mind again.