Only You. - movie reviews

THERE ARE two very sad things about the romantic comedy Only You: there is no romance in it, and there is no comedy. Meant to be a lighthearted love story against a picturesque backdrop, with two charming people clearly destined for each other having to surmount hilarious obstacles from without and within until they can finally land in an exultant clinch, Only You does indeed meet two of the requirements: the picturesque backgrounds and the concluding clinch. Aside from that, catastrophe.

Europe steadily, and America intermittently, used to manage this sort of thing with consummate aplomb. Now the Europeans seem no longer interested, and the Americans have lost the knack: Sleepless in Seattle is about as good as such things get here, and not all its insomnia could rouse the dormant genre from its lethargy. Only You may put it to such sleep as no Prince Charming could kiss awake.

This first-time screenplay by Diane Drake concerns Faith Corwatch, to whom at age 11 the Ouija board spells out the name of the one man in the world for her: Damon Bradley. A fortune teller, not long thereafter, confirms it: Damon Bradley, whoever he is, is it. Faith grows up with perfect faith in her Damon, but no such creature occurs. Now she is about to marry an innocuous, wimpy podiatrist, Dwayne, and settle into typical Pittsburgh domesticity, such as that of her sister-in-law, Kate, who suspects Larry, the father of her three children and owner of a small roofing business, of adultery. As Faith is trying on her wedding gown, the phone rings: a friend of Dwayne's regrets that he won't be able to attend the wedding. As she jots down his name, Faith gives a double, if not quadruple, take: her moving fingers have writ "Damon Bradley."

So far, so good. Bradley says he is calling from the airport on his way to Venice. Faith throws a coat over her wedding gown and taxis to the airport, but is not allowed on the plane. She calls Kate to bring her some clothes and her passport subito, and, presto magico, both are on the next flight to Italy, Kate only too glad to get away for a bit from Larry's presumptive infidelity. With that departure for Venice, things start getting seriously wrong. Even romance and whimsy need some connection to reality. But if Faith is as charming as we are to believe her to be, why would she marry a drip like Dwayne? And why is the supposedly equally charming Kate married to Larry, as boorish a fellow as ever had a roof under his feet? How do these women come by enough money and leisure to just take off for Italy, stay at the best hotels, wear the most expensive clothes immaculately emerging from little overnight bags, and, despite total monolingual provincialism, get around Italy well enough? I am willing to suspend my disbelief up to a point: past it, I become more inclined to hang the screenwriter.

What happens in Venice, Rome, Positano, and San Gimignano is appalling: witless, crudely contrived, blatantly preposterous, and desperately sweaty under the collar--and I am not referring to the canicular Italian climate. Furthermore, anything of the remotest interest here feebly echoes Summertime (1955), an incomparably better film, with David Lean for co-writer and director, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi. That one had the realities of life intrude gently on the romance. In Only You, all is gooey: no sex is ever consummated; Kate's Larry doesn't really cheat on her, and comes to fetch her in Positano; everyone ends up with the right person, except for the dorky Dwayne, but then, that serves him right. Lacking is the slightest trace of charm.

The casting isn't romantic. Marisa Tomei is a passable comedienne, but she has long since exhausted her bag of tricks, and her butch haircut puts the lid on whatever slender physical appeal she might have. The heroine of such a film need not be a beauty (think of Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, and the rest), but she has to be winning. Miss Tomei, I'm afraid, comes across homely and simple-minded, which works neither for romance nor for screwball comedy, which requires some sophistication. Opposite her is Robert Downey Jr., not a bad actor, but one cursed or blessed with the kind of face that refuses to grow up (Matthew Broderick is such another), and not to be taken seriously as a romantic lead. Bonnie Hunt, as Kate, is better, and has the comedic skills required for the traditional role of the heroine's wry, wisecracking sidekick, even if the script provides scant assistance. For the role of the suave Italian to romance her, we get Joaquim De Almeida. He is a good actor and, for a Portuguese, manages the Italian stuff quite convincingly; but he is not handsome the way Rossano Brazzi was in Summertime. The rest, including Fisher Stevens as Larry, don't matter much, but meet the uninspired demands made of them.

To add to the crudeness, there is, on top of Rachel Portman's agreeable original music, one of those marketable soundtrack potpourris, including everything from "O sole mio" to the "Hallelujah Chorus." No stinting on production values, though. There are the gorgeous gowns of Milena Canonero, the opulent production design of Luciana Arrighi, and the almost painfully beautiful cinematorgraphy of Sven Nykvist, surpassing even that of the capable Jack Hildyard for Summertime. All the Italian locations look superb, with the cunningly used filters all but painting the lily, and Positano shot as a many-layered cake good enough to eat. An irresistible travelogue, in short.