Riprendimi
**/****
starring Alba Rohrwacher, Marco Foschi, Valentina Lodovini, Stefano Fresi
screenplay by Anna Negri and Giovanna Mori
directed by Anna Negri
by Alex Jackson Broadly speaking, bad movies come in two distinct flavours: boring and obnoxious. I'm always conflicted as to which is worse, but as of this moment, I feel like it would be faint praise to say that Riprendimi (the preferred English title is Good Morning Heartache) is just plain boring. Small-time actor Giovanni (Marco Foschi) and television editor Lucia (Alba Caterina Rohrwacher) are a young Roman couple who have agreed to appear in a documentary about temp workers. The thesis of the documentarians is that the vicarious employment and financial instability of freelance work stunts emotional growth–which would appear to be proven at the start of the film when Giovanni tells his wife that he is no longer in love with her and needs to go "find himself." Meanwhile, Eros (Allesandro Averone), the director assigned to cover Lucia during the break-up, starts falling in love with his subject. Riprendimi director Anna Negri doesn't distinguish between the documentary footage and 'reality,' shooting everything in beautiful 35mm. Is she suggesting that real life and "reel life" have become inextricable for everyone involved? Not really. As opposed to lending this thin material some kind of raison d'être, the documentary angle mostly provides Negri and her co-writer Giovanna Mori a way to approach their material outside of a traditional dramatic narrative. Far from challenging or alienating the audience, Negri's goal seems to be to make the film considerably less demanding. When she gives us a scene of the documentary filmmakers psychoanalyzing their subjects, it's as though she's doing all the work for us. Though I never ran out of empathy for the constantly-feuding Giovanni and Lucia, I did run out of patience. The film goes on and on in circles and never really gets anywhere. Eventually, I found myself staying just to soak in Negri's Italy, a fantasyland of wine, rigatoni, plunging necklines, and hand gestures all marvellously shot with a carefully-cultivated sense of off-the-cuff spontaneity. If there isn't anything of substance to be found in Riprendimi, it's no small consolation to know that it's pretty great wallpaper.
