AVANTI!

This is one of Billy Wilder's last films, made in 1972, and as such it was with some trepidation that I finally got around to seeing it, given that his films towards the end of his illustrious career are variable in quality, to say the least.

Regrettably even a Wilder-completist like me wasn't able to make it to the midpoint let alone the end of this 140-minute 'comedy'.

So my thoughts are necessarily subject to the caveat that the film might pick up in the second half, but I doubt it.  In fact, from the plot synopsis, it seems I gave up at just the right time thereby avoiding some subplots that don't sound essential.

The basic setup has some promise: Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills play two strangers who meet in Italy when they go there to arrange the funerals of his father and her mother, who have died in a car accident, only to discover that they (the parents) have been conducting a love affair at the same hotel each summer for the last ten years.

A big problem though is the casting of the two leads.  Lemmon as a successful but charmless and unpleasant businessman doesn't play to his strengths.  Mills is OK in a bland kind of way but lacks charisma or personality.

To add to the general unpleasantness both he and she seem to think she has a weight problem, when clearly she doesn't.  I don't normally have much truck with criticisms of Wilder that he is tasteless, but Lemmon referring to her (in her hearing) as 'Miss Fat-Ass' when they are in a chapel to identify the dead bodies was grim.

That line is symptomatic of a general problem here which is I suspect that Wilder, in an effort not to appear behind the times, has made the mistake of going for crassness and crudity. 

But sadly, despite the references to 'chicks' and 'shacking up,' it does all feel rather 1950s, and not in a good way.

There's also a general lack of subtlety, which often happens when a director begins to lose confidence in himself and his audience.

Well I won't bang on any more about a film I bailed out of.  It's just not worthy of a great director and screenwriter.  But then again, nobody's perfect.

RATING: xx Don't Waste Your Time