Few films have had a starting point as charming as this Italian production directed by Ettore (La Nuit de Varennes) Scola. An American, Jack Lemmon, is in Naples on business when he is accosted by an Italian, Marcello Mastroianni. While a serviceman in Italy after World War II, Lemmon had had a romance with an Italian woman, then jilted her. Mastroianni is the woman's brother. To protect his sister's feelings, he had started writing letters to her in English under Lemmon's name and was never able to stop. The sister has long since married, but she is still enthralled with Lemmon. And why not? Mastroianni's letters have made him seem to be a combination of James Bond, Superman and Albert Schweitzer. It's a wonderful idea, especially as Lemmon comes to identify with his mythical self in the letters. It's also gratifying to see these two distinguished actors playing against each other, Lemmon all American intensity and nervousness, Mastroianni resigned, with an eternity of patience. But this film is far more casual, far more loosely structured than most Italian movies. Lemmon often lapses into those exaggerated cringes of exasperation he's famous for as if to fill what he perceived, correctly, to be dreadful lulls in the proceedings. The humor in the situation is largely unexploited. The one scene where it's pursued, in which Mastroianni's family insists that Lemmon demonstrate the piano-playing prowess he has often written about, seems only a setup to let Lemmon demonstrate that he is in real life an accomplished pianist. The film's ending is also so horribly sentimental you feel like kicking the projector. (PG)
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