Avanti! is a
romantic comedy, and something a bit more.
It tells the bittersweet story of an American (Jack Lemmon) and a Brit (Juliet Mills)
who independently journey to Ischia in the Bay of Naples, he to retrieve the
body of his father and she that of her mother, both of whom just died together
in an automobile crash. Lemmon discovers
to his chagrin that the two elders had been having a surreptitious one-month summer
affair for 10 years. The movie becomes
an understated story of the beginning of a second generation affair between two
unlikely people who start out at odds, but where soon enough the gruff
exterior of the harried American businessman softens in the face of the
charm of Ms Mills’s character and of the Italian setting (Italy isn’t a country,
it’s an emotion, says Ms Mills). Remarkably,
Avanti! isn’t very well known today, and isn’t shown much on cable TV (as a
veteran channel-flipper, I know), but on release in 1972 it received 6 Golden
Globe nominations, and one win (Lemmon).
The movie reminds me of a late-career, very personal, and
similarly undeservedly underappreciated picture by another favorite director of
mine – John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef. Like that one, this one is full of the
director’s many special touches – comedy, sentimentality, satire. Mills’s riff on not being taken for granted
while she enthusiastically unpacks her clothes in Lemmon’s room is hilarious, the
hotel manager is superb, the medicinal mud baths promise an older diplomat the
acidity of a man of 20, and it’s delightful to discover how well-stocked the
ristorante is with the many varieties of pasta.
There’s plenty of the sardonic
humor for which writers Wilder and Diamond are known – an impatient,
overbearing American diplomat is approaching the small island in a
helicopter and asks the pilot “Are you sure this is Ischia, because I do not want to land in Africa?”, from whom comes the reply “That would be bigger”. Subtle comedic touches abound -- the movement of the door handle at a moment of Sicilian passion, the pop of a wine bottle at dinner, a reflexive fascist salute, soaking fingernails in a sugar bowl. The beautiful score
consists mostly of well-chosen established Italian tunes – Un’ Ora Sola Ti Vorrei, A
Tazza E’ Café, and Senza Fine particularly
set the moods and pace. At its core, this
is the story of an awakening, a passing through a doorway to a fuller life – Permesso? Avanti!
R Balsamo
Hello! I could have sworn I've been to this site before but after checking through some of the post I realized it's new to me. Nonetheless, I'm definitely glad I found it and I'll be bookmarking and checking back often!
ReplyDeleteMy website - tampa family lawyer