My review was written in May 1991 after a Cannes Film festival Market screening.
A top comedy hit recently on its home turf, Italian farce "Tonight at Alice's" combines irreverence and sentimentality in a manner unlikely to interest American distributors.
Carlo Verdone, who broke into filmmaking over a decade ago sponsored by Sergio Leone, has fashioned a slim tale of infidelity that casts him and brother-in-law Sergio Castellitto as managers of a travel agency owned by their wives.
When Verdone finds out that company money is going to house Castellitto's mistress (Ornella Muti) in a warehouse converted to a loft, he's determined to throw her out. In the midst of one of her parties, he's won over by her beauty and a sob story about her depressed sister who lives with her.
Two hours of repetitive complications later, the brothers-in-law have fought each other and come to an accommodation sharing Muti's favors. Twist is that while the viewer thinks she's a free-loving party girl, she's never actually had sex with either Lothario.
Along the way Verdone gets in jabs at everything under the Roman sun: religion and would-be saints, abortion, glories of "freedom" when one's wife throws him out of the house,and even a funny but tasteless subplot about adopting a cute refugee kid from Romania.
What tags this property as a local effort is the script's careless approach to character. In key scenes (Muti's comes early on) the leads are called upon to act quite unsympathetically with no justification. Their fans won't mind but the arm's length viewer might tune out. Least successful ploy is the depressed sister: she hangs around for many reels, suddenly commits suidciede and then is promptly forgotten.
While Muti is too glamorous for the role of struggling model/actress, her charm and physical comedy talents work well here. A contrived nude scene for her is framed as if a double were used. Verdone is a believable everyman and plays well off Castellitto, latter a dead ringer for American-Italian thesp John Turturro.
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