Giovanni Veronesi
Manuale D'Amore 3

THE REVIEW

Sometimes you don't realize that masochism can be involuntary, or perhaps you think that, as it was for "My Friends" by Monicelli, all three films will surely be worth watching.

Surely, if you think this, you don't realize that Veronesi has nothing to do with Monicelli, nor with the Italian comedy that the latter had "accustomed" us to see.

The structure of the film is the one already used: three episodes, more or less connected, even if with stories that walk on their "own legs". Here we find ourselves with three different moments, three sentimental seasons (you would say: thankfully there's no fourth), marked by ages and thus by different generations: Youth, Maturity, Beyond.

The first episode, Scamarcio in love, is perhaps the worst: improbable story, thirty-somethings from the Moccia epic, with a slightly "diabetic" ending.

In the second, Verdone as a TV presenter, is entangled in a story that faintly reminds "Fatal Attraction"; decidedly more homemade and less engaging, our story has one merit: in some lines and situations, the lip relaxes and shyly reveals a few dentals.

Third and last episode, De Niro with a heart transplant, rediscovers the flutter of love thanks to the attractive Monica Bellucci, an "unlucky" forty-something, but unfortunately always the same: zero acting, soporific as a benzodiazepine, but plenty to see. De Niro acts, even in Italian, but is decidedly sacrificed to the necessity of "making a profit".

Did I perhaps exaggerate in my criticism? I don't know, but certainly the attempt to elevate the film with the second story falters definitively on the acting stumble posed by Bellucci in the third.

My Friends Act I-II-III was truly something else.