MANUAL OF LOVE
***½ out of *****
Reviewed by Juan Incognito

Screening at the 2006 Italian Film Festival
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Genres
Comedy
Romance

2005
Directed by
Giovanni Veronesi
Written by
Vincenzo Cerami (story)
Ugo Chiti (screenplay)
Giovanni Veronesi (screenplay)
Cast
Carlo Verdone
Luciana Littizzetto
Silvio Muccino
Sergio Rubini
Margherita Buy

Manual of Love makes no apologies that it is a romantic comedy, from the very first scene till the last it is all about the struggle to find or restore love in a relationship. I appreciate this honesty, as there is little worse than a romantic comedy masquerading as something it’s not.

The film is structured in an interesting fashion with the theme, love and its various stages, driving the movie as opposed to the narrative. There are four parts to the film each concerning a person or couple and their adventures in love, and each part describing a phase of the cycle of love. In addition to this, each story is linked through having characters in common with the other part. This structure works rather well, as the stories and themes are compartmentalised and therefore run less risk of losing the audience. I found this enhanced my enjoyment of a film from a genre that I usually do not enjoy.

The film seeks to show the various stages of love, from the beginning of a relationship, crisis, to the end, and how to move on in the form of a manual. So the opening sequence is of a narration from a magazine series entitled “the manual of love”, which then seamlessly merges into the first story. There is a strong effort throughout the film to merge each story into the next, through related characters, shared scenes, and references back to previous stories. It works rather well, and while it could easily be laboured, it is not since the film makes pains to remind people that it is sort of a manual. Therefore, some actors are allowed to talk to the camera to indicate a message or offer their opinion on love or the person in love. This does not mean that the film is necessarily trying to put forth a message, like something trite; it is really just an observational experience.

Being a comedy there is a strong reliance on a solid script and the actors being able to deliver their lines and activity without appearing too forced or hamming it up. Manual of Love achieves in this regard, although perhaps it might be easier to convey the appearance of quality to a foreign audience where the subtleties of the original language might be lost or disguised through translation. Either way the actors delivered a generally solid performance, with little to detract from their performance.

Overall, Manual of Love is a solid, watchable romantic comedy. It delivers a good level of comedy while not being overly preachy or message-focused. Even those who do not usually enjoy this genre might well enjoy this film, due to its unique structure.

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