What is infibulation? Dictionary.com defines it as “to close off or obstruct the genitals of, especially by sewing together the labia majora in females or fastening the prepuce in males, so as to prevent sexual intercourse.” It’s a question that’s asked a number of times throughout the course of Remember Me, My Love, but is there a word for the closing off or obstruction of the cerebrum so as to prevent someone from making movies?
No Italian director makes films as bad as Gabriele Muccino does and is consistently rewarded for them. The director conflates sexual identity and the arts, but his fascination with modes of expression is scarcely concerned with liberating the cloying nuclear unit at the film’s center: white-collar drone Carlo Ristuccia (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) rejuvenates an affair with an ex-flame (Monica Bellucci) who subsequently rekindles his passion for writing, his wife Giulia (Laura Morante) joins a theater show but her midlife crisis repeatedly gets in the way of her line readings (not to mention her gaydar), and their daughter Valentina (Nicoletta Romanoff) has aspirations of singing and dancing on a trashy TV program called Ali Baba.
These aren’t real people, but star fuckers and bourgeois whiners living out Muccino’s own poseur fantasy. Almost a mirror image of the director’s prior The Last Kiss, this shrill portrait of pretty, self-flattering Italians fucking each other is another whack-off to Paul Thomas Anderson. From the constantly roving camera and hysteria-ridden montage sequences to the strings on the film’s soundtrack and rapid-fire chitter-chatter, it’s obvious that Muccino’s annoying case of Magnolia-itis is only getting worse by the minute.
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