To Rome with Love

If you ever find yourself at a dinner party with a group of hardcore cinephiles and the conversation turns toward late-period Woody Allen, you can usually predict the trajectory. Someone will champion the nostalgic magic of Midnight in Paris (2011), while another will defend the sharp, prickly edges of Blue Jasmine (2013). But then there’s the person in the corner—usually the one who enjoys a bit of chaos—who will pipe up and say, "What about the one where the guy has to sing opera in a literal shower on a professional stage?"

That movie is To Rome with Love, a film that felt like a bit of a comedown in 2012 but has since ripened into a fascinating, fragmented cult curiosity. It is essentially a high-budget episode of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' directed by a man who refuses to use a computer. I watched this while eating a bowl of lukewarm Spaghetti-O’s—which is arguably the greatest insult to Italian culture possible—yet the golden Roman sunlight on screen still managed to make me feel like I was sipping a Negroni in the Piazza Navona.

A Four-Course Meal of Roman Absurdity

The film is structured as four distinct vignettes that never intersect, which is either a refreshing break from the "everything is connected" trope of the 2010s or a sign that the screenplay was actually four different desk-drawer ideas stitched together with pasta water. The standout, for sheer commitment to a bit, involves Jerry (played by Woody Allen himself in one of his final on-screen roles). Jerry is a retired opera director who discovers a mortician with a voice like Caruso. The catch? The man can only sing well while lathering up in the shower.

The sight of a full-sized, tiled shower stall being wheeled onto an opera stage so a man can sing Pagliacci while scrubbing his armpits is the kind of surrealist slapstick that Allen’s fans haven't seen since the days of Bananas or Sleeper. It’s profoundly silly, and Woody Allen plays the neurotic, "death is lurking around the corner" energy with a familiar, comforting rhythm. Beside him, the wonderful Judy Davis (so sharp in Husbands and Wives) plays his wife, Phyllis, providing the perfect dry-ice balance to his frantic ambition.

The Ghost of Architecture Past

My favorite segment—and the one that usually sparks the most debate among fans—features Alec Baldwin as John, a successful architect wandering his old Roman haunts. He runs into Jack (Jesse Eisenberg, doing the fast-talking, stammering persona that was his bread and butter in the early 2010s). Suddenly, John becomes a sort of temporal ghost or a "cynical Jiminy Cricket," invisible to others but standing in the corner of Jack’s apartment to warn him about the seductive, high-maintenance Monica (played by Ellen Page).

It’s a bizarre narrative device that shouldn’t work, but Alec Baldwin delivers his lines with such a weary, lived-in authority that you just accept the magical realism. It’s a great example of 2010s indie-adjacent filmmaking where the rules of physics are secondary to the mood of a mid-life crisis. Looking back, Jesse Eisenberg was the perfect vessel for this era of Allen’s work; he captures that specific brand of intellectual anxiety without it feeling like a direct imitation.

Fame, Farce, and the Khondji Glow

Then there’s the Roberto Benigni segment. He plays Leopoldo, a man who is mundane to the point of invisibility until, one morning, he becomes a national celebrity for no reason at all. Paparazzi want to know what he had for breakfast; women throw themselves at him because he’s "famous for being famous." In a world before TikTok and "influencer" culture was fully baked, this felt like a sharp, albeit broad, satire of the burgeoning obsession with vacuous celebrity. Roberto Benigni is a master of physical comedy, and his transition from bewildered clerk to ego-driven star is vintage stuff.

Tying it all together is the cinematography of Darius Khondji (who also shot Seven and Uncut Gems). The film is drenched in a warm, honey-colored light that makes the city look like a dream. Even when the jokes don't land—and let’s be honest, the "young couple getting lost" plotline feels like a relic from a 1950s farce—the movie is gorgeous to look at. Penélope Cruz shows up as a high-class call girl who accidentally ends up in the wrong hotel room, and she dominates the screen with a comedic energy that reminds you why she won an Oscar for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Stuff You Didn't Notice

What makes To Rome with Love a "cult" entry in the Allen canon is the bizarre production trivia. Apparently, the film was originally titled The Bop Decameron, then Nero Fiddled, before the studio stepped in and demanded something that sounded like a travel brochure. It also marks the end of an era: it was one of the last films Allen shot on 35mm before moving into the digital revolution.

Fans have obsessed over the "shower opera" logistics for years—turns out, they had to build functional plumbing into the stage sets, which led to a few soggy rehearsals. There’s also the fact that Roberto Benigni and Woody Allen had never worked together despite being two of the most recognizable comic voices in global cinema. Watching them share a film (even if they don't share a scene) feels like a missed-connection finally being corrected.

While it lacks the emotional weight of his earlier masterpieces, there is something deeply charming about the film's refusal to be "important." It’s a collection of short stories told by an aging filmmaker who just wanted an excuse to spend a summer in Italy. It’s a postcard that arrived a little late, slightly crumpled, but written with an unmistakable hand.

If you're looking for a profound meditation on the human condition, you might want to keep walking down the cobblestone street. But if you want to see Alec Baldwin haunt a young architect while a mortician sings arias in a cloud of soap bubbles, this is your stop. It’s a messy, sun-drenched comedy that proves that sometimes, the "minor" works of a director are the ones that are the most fun to revisit when the world feels a bit too serious.