Blame Freud

Paolo Genovese's Tutta colpa di Frued (Blame Freud) is a romantic comedy that spreads its net across four different romantic situations for a wider view of different ways of handling relationships and breakups. Such of course is the nature of the romantic comedy that not even one of them is remotely convincing, but there's at least a better chance that you'll find something entertaining and delightful in one aspect of the film or another.

Francesco is a psychoanalyst in Rome. He has three daughters all who have problems in their love lives. Sara has just returned from New York after her latest same-sex partner ran out on her after her proposal of marriage. Having failed with women, she's decided consequently that it might be worth trying men instead. Yeah, like that's going to work... or any of them for that matter. Marta runs a bookshop, but her romantic ideals don't coincide with reality until she feels a strange attraction to a deaf-mute man who for some unfathomable reason steals opera libretti from her shop. Emma, the youngest daughter, aged 18, has been seeing a man, Alessandro, who is 50, the same age as her father. He's promised her that his marriage is over and just needs time to break it up.

Although the promises of a married man is something of a cliche, it's the latter case that holds the most promise and is better integrated into the film as a whole. Alessandro agrees to submit himself to therapy with Francesco to take the necessary steps to prove that he no longer has feelings for his wife and that their marriage is over. Francesco of course is trying to reignite Alessandro's feelings for his wife and show him that his 18 year old daughter is too young for him, but a conflict of interest arises when Francesco, who has been divorced for 20 years, discovers that the attractive woman he has been seeing in the neighbourhood, is Claudia, Alessandro's wife.

The problem is that it takes a while for Francesco to even recognise that he's working against himself, and unfortunately, the film does tend to rely on its characters being very naive about relationships, particularly Sara. The observations Genovese makes in Tutta colpa di Freud are moreover are banal, false and unrealistic, but if you can get past the contrivance the film has its lighthearted moments and entertaining comedy. If there's one observation that rings true it's that people often make mistakes and can hurt each other without meaning to, but Tutto colpa di Freud ruins what little indulgence it earns in those moments with its hopelessly romantic conclusions.