Davide is a bus tour guide in Rome; he is back at work but he is still struggling with the loss of his girlfriend, who left him recently. She is also a tour guide and it was on the job that they initially met. Putting her from his mind, David starts to introduce the landmarks to his small international group on top of the double- decker bus, however it is not long till his mind wanders and the group find themselves on an altogether different tour from the one they booked.
There are a couple of things to immediately like about this film and one of them is the location. Despite being a student film, we are set in Rome and are in a mobile location of a tour bus. Here we have the constantly moving background of the city and landmarks while the story plays out. This not only makes for a very good background for the film, but it also is technically impressive since the sound quality is good, and there is a good sense of continuity with the look and location – all of which were things that must have taken a lot of management to get right. Also commendable is the attempt to make a light and charming little film based on the good idea for the short – and it is a good idea. However, I don't think that the film was able to deliver that spark as much as it needed to.
The fault is not with the lead actor (Natoli) because he is actually very good, with a likable air and sells the sense of longing and love well. Instead it is the supporting aspects that hurt the film. The most present of these is the music, which is far too "cute" for its own good, pushing the film to be something that it isn't – and the music hustling it to be that way actually makes the gap feel bigger. The second is that the supporting cast is really not as good as Natoli. It is hard to describe what they are doing wrong, but generally they are clunky, unnatural and delivering lines in isolation, with no character or role other than those lines at that moment. They are not helped by them being broadly written and directly; speaking of which – the spark of the piece is not where it needs to be, which is a shame because it is a good idea and technically a very good run at it.
So, it is a film with things to recommend it for, however the romantic charm does not come off as well as it should have done, and while it clearly wanted me to go with it and fall in love with the sweetness of it, the music, the clunkiness and the lack of freshness in the delivery really limited what it was able to do.
