Gente di Roma

I saw this film Saturday night. I have to admit I'm a fan of Ettore Scola and I expected much more. If we recall films like "The New Monsters" , "Ugly, Dirty and Bad" , "We All Loved Each Other So Much", the very touching "The Family " and many others, the word to describe this movie is disappointment. Poor script, poor photography, parallel stories without any connection, amateur actors (or even worst, people who pretend to be), etc. The first half hour looks like you are going to watch a great movie, but later on, the tempo of the film decays deeply, characters who appear and disappear without any logic, and so on. If we were entitled to see how the Romans are and live today, forget about it, it's a confuse mosaic without any talent.

I think this is a good movie that could have been great. It "sits between two stools". Sometimes it tries to be funny, others "serious", "dealing with contentious issues" but even then, with a light approach.

What is always there is the cliché, the corny twist. I love whatever is Italian, if you show me whichever of their old buildings I instantly love them. So their people, with the quirks only a fellow "Italian" like me can understand. Nevertheless, I don't think a film should be granted more score just because you like the topics, language, scenery and characters.

I never felt anything for anybody. And that's quite bad for an Italian movie... I'm afraid it stays within the surface, never really saying anything we don't already know. Sometimes one could even know how the "episodes" would end... (they're quite predictable).

What I do like is that many stories are left unfinished, maybe because there's no easy way out. Like the black man being left out of the bar because of his colour. Others, like the cleaning man clinging to the blue collar's car is purportedly comic, but grossly so. You can't have it both ways. I'm not sure I'd like to meet this "auteur", and that's a very personal way I have to know whether I like a film or not.

Italian women have a way of being beautiful and suggestive that's also here. I can think of the estranged wife, and even the lesbian love between tables.

Actors are fine, they don' seem to be acting at all. The script fails. Like the one at the beginning, with this man who's supposed to be a reporter. I didn't get the point of it, were it American one would think it's TV humour alla "Friends" when they put people in "awkward" situations so we instantly "identify" with them. Which comes by me as bad as their fast food. Or the man in the cemetery, what a botched idea!! It being genial, he waists it by placing the narrator talk (monologue) to the woman driver about his hearings of the dead. Which makes him a freak, like the ghost of "Russian Ark".

The whole cinema roared of laughter with the quip the old man who's going to be sent to a geriatric says to the "woman in her 60s but still attractive". But putting, again, an old character reciting the many synonyms of "dick" just to "show the youngster what's right" is demagogue at best. Even if it feigns some "literary patina", like "Cyrano". By the way, the director is old, and it shows in all the choices he makes. He gets to be tyring.

Agree with "Kandrap" that you don't know what to think when you're out of the cinema. He illuminated me: old people have a preponderance here. Also true that it changes "mood" about halfway.

All in all, just for "sociologists" and lovers of Italy (like me, both categories). Thanks IMDb for covering unusual films like this one, and letting us voice our quibbles :)

The three previous commentaries are very good and to the point. I agree with all of them in what they express. That's why I will make no comments of this film because everything has been said. I would only offer empty repetition.

I just want to call attention to the way Rome is shown here. They start with a pitch black (winter?) break of dawn, with people on public transportation, most of them going to work, humble kind of work no doubt if they go to it that early in the day.

The photography is digital, according to the credits, so maybe on a big cinema screen this movie causes a very different impression; since I saw it at home on a small flat screen, I'm sure I lost plenty with the smallness of the screen size.

Little by little the sky changes colors from very deep blues to very bright Mediterranean skies; colors, quite saturated at the beginning --almost black, with total absence of chroma-- start to be recognizable on their own shades.

Midday comes along, later the golden afternoon and finally night again. A whole day has been photographed through different Roman streets, monuments, fountains, traffic..., all of it with care, love and a lingering camera quietly going throughout this marvelous city, caressing a decaying pale pink wall here, a blue-grey cobblestone street pattern there, the wet pavement reflecting the thousand traffic lights in movement, etc.

Of course the movie fails to give us the full impact of the incomparable experience of being there in person, but it gives food to the mind to rekindle memories: "Yes! I know that building! I've been through that street, I recognize that monument!" and maybe I identified those characters with so many others similar to them in real life! that sort of warm thinking is a delicate subconscious offering of this movie as an understructure for the multiple stories and characters. Nostalgic. Charming. Nice.

'Gente di Roma' is a collection of anecdotes. Or I should say, that the director has many things to convey and doesn't want to bind it in a story. 'People of Rome', is at the heart of this movie. Movie doesn't have any official script or storyline. The director wants to show some sections of people of Rome and he does it rather honestly. As a cinematic experiment it is interesting. As the movie doesn't have a particular story or theme, when you leave the cinema hall, you are not sure, how to feel and what to feel. The movie claims to be a reflection of people of Rome and their lives. The first half of the movie is quite light and funny. You get a humorous impression of Romans. But than, the movie suddenly changes its mood. It becomes slower and sad.

However movie is an honest account of several problems gripping Italian and even European society. It talks boldly about racism and racist attitude of some sections of the society. It talks about mixed feelings of the indigenous people towards immigrants. It also talks about economic stagnation and unemployment of people. It symbolically addresses the issue of homosexuality. And the part, movie is most vocal about, is the problem of senior citizens. European demography has changed a lot after the second world war. Now it's a society with lots of old people. However, with family system fading away, taking care of senior citizens is becoming a problem. There is a scene where a father and a son are talking over dinner at a restaurant. The old father is cribbing about everything. He is making fun of the waiter and people around. The son is not able to keep the father with him. And the father gives excellent expression of pleading. You can read in his eyes that he craves to be with his grandchildren.

I think it's a movie, where the director doesn't want to convey anything. He just wants to express some random thoughts about Rome. He is critical about the city but still you feel that he loves the city. Hence it turns out be an expression of a personal sentiment. But it may fail to appeal masses. If you want to see something different, you can try this one. But don't expect to be entertained!!!