Amour et Ennuis

I'd not heard of the director but got this on DVD from Movie Detective's splendid site because of the three stars, and because I love Italian films. I'm glad I did and I share MRBICKLE's enthusiasm, particularly for Mastroianni's performance The film chops between three stories, all about young couples with obstacles to their love. Franco (Mastroianni) is a waiter on railway dining cars whose girlfriend Lisa is a telephone operator. His travels and their shift patterns mean they hardly get any time together. Paolo (Basehart) has been in prison after a fight, and now finds it hard to get a job, which he needs if he's to marry his mute girlfriend Marisa (Cortese.) Roberto seems to love Teresa, but is wary of marriage, and sees himself more as Casanova than faithful Romeo.

With six screenwriters and a director making his first film this could have been a mess, but instead it's a delight, as so many Italian films were at that time. It seems almost totally forgotten, and David Shipman's section on Mastroianni in his book on Great Movie Stars doesn't mention it. Dorigo made 6 more films, which are equally neglected. Four of them have no plot/synopsis on IMDB, and several have leads you'll ever have heard of. It's a pity, as he does a really good job here. One oddity; the Basehart - Cortese section (they were married at the time) was in colour, while the other two were in black and white.

It is always delightful to discover such an outstanding movie completely unknown for you (even with a star in the cast). They're films that you see by chance, maybe you caught them on TV late in the night.

AMORE E GUAI is a magnificent comedy with dramatic touches, a mix (if that is possible) between the freshness of ROMAN HOLIDAY and the sadness from LADRI DI BICICLETTE. It tells the story of some couples in love, who don't know between them, in concrete moments of their relationship. Some stories are more depressing and others are more optimistic, let's call it a 'neorrealist comedy'.

The stories are not in order, they transpose each other like they did in INTOLERANCE, for example, what makes of AMORE E GUAI not a movie of episodes. The two more interesting are the one with Mastroianni, who plays a train waiter and the sweet relationship of an ex-convict and his deaf girlfriend.

A movie that I can recommend to everyone...