Review

If Gabriele Muccino's The Last Kiss is any indication, the Paul Thomas Anderson Fan Club has collected enough fees from its members to buy itself a film camera and make their own movies. There's enough melodrama in this Magnolia Primavera to make PTA proud, but director Muccino's characters are less worthy of Puccini than they are of daytime television. This Italian potboiler not only reduces the mechanisms of late twentysomething love, it also excuses the extra-marital affair with a strange set of conditions: it's okay to cheat if you beg hard for forgiveness, if your lover cheated before you, or if your lover doesn't kiss you goodnight. What with the anxious zoom, non-stop strings on the soundtrack, and rapid-fire chitter-chatter, The Last Kiss certainly looks like Magnolia. But where Anderson cares for his larger-than-life characters, Muccino seems more concerned with casting model faces. The Last Kiss is certainly hornier than Magnolia but it has none of its soul.