The brain behind Italy’s popular Perfect Strangers hatches another high-concept comedy. It’s ripe for a remake rom-com focusing on the conflicting emotions a man and a woman’s experience on their first date, rendering both parties insufferably neurotic.
Director Paolo Genovese treats his latest feature, more like a format than a proper film. The high- concept romantic comedy is perfect for reinvention in a diverse range of languages and cultures. The setup borrows from the ’90s sitcoms, in that it alternates between the real world, where Piero (Edoardo Leo) meets Lara (Pilar Fogliati) at her apartment for a meal and perhaps more, while the colourful choruses quarrel inside their respective heads. Unfortunately, these diverse emotions and impulses are not clearly defined in the script, which the director wrote in league with four others.
MADLY slightly favours Piero’s point of view but does a decent job of giving Lara’s interior monologue equal time to the extent that a relatively simple first date– he arrives at her apartment, they tentatively size up each other over drinks, alternating between flirtation and conflict before all their attractions and insecurities come to a climax, so to speak, in the bedroom – drags out as both parties overthink every little thing.
Piero’s peanut gallery consists of hot-blooded Eros (Claudio Santamaria), romantic Romeo (Maurizio Lastrico), rational yet reticent Professor (Marco Ciallini), and a wildcard named Valium (Rocco Papaleo), who is the risk taker of the bunch. Meanwhile Lara’s feelings are represented by Trilli (Emanuela Fanelli), Giulietta (Vittoria Puccini), Alfa (Claudia Pandolfi) and Scheggia (Maria Ciara Giannetta), who apparently correspond to the same mix of lust, love, logic and rebellion Piero is juggling — through her feminine wiles are gathered in a stylish modern loft, whereas Piero’s macho quartet occupy what looks like a Spartan industrial storage room. Given the claustrophobic spaces that their respective psyches occupy, it’s strange that Genovese chose to set the couples’ rendezvous inside Lara’s apartment instead of having them roam around Rome.
The movie opens in Piero’s mind, where it takes a moment for us to realise that the four gents debating what kind of condoms to buy for the night have been engaged in some version of the same debate all their lives: to be bashful or bold, chivalrous or chauvinistic?
What MADLY lacks is the intellectual chemistry that causes us to fall in love with these characters while they are presumably falling in love with each other. Piero and Lara are cautiously trying to seduce each other while protecting themselves from bonking what could be a crazy person. The director deals with their dilemmas cleverly, by putting those obnoxious emotions to good use in the end.
If you liked Perfect Strangers you will most likely enjoy MADLY.
