Qualcosa di nuovo

Cristina Comencini, daughter of Luigi (and proof that "nepo baby" is not a modern invention), directs this limp comedy about two forty-something friends who "fall" for - read "enjoy time in the sack with - the same 19-year-old. Cortellesi plays Lucia, the uptight one, and Ramazzotti is Maria, the "free spirit." After both sleep with Luca, the boy wonder, they proceed to lie to each other and to him in the most forced, arbitrary way possible.

The movie thinks it's cheeky and maybe even feminist by flipping the May-December cliché. In reality, it's just the same old story: women humiliating themselves and becoming hypocrites over a man, except this time the man hasn't even finished growing.

The supposed comic centerpiece - Luca mistaking Lucia for Maria after a drunken night - is dragged out to agony. Any sane human being would clear it up in five seconds, but the scene stretches into eternity. Later, we're treated to more artificial set pieces (the two friends chatting inside a cinema, because why be normal when you can be contrived?).

There are a few sparks from Cortellesi and Ramazzotti, but mostly this is Italian rom-com autopilot. Predictable, unfunny, and yet another reason why Italian cinema keeps gasping for air.