For many American teenagers, college is a great undiscovered country. However, in the romantic comedy “Love & Gelato,” Lina (Susanna Skaggs) lost her beloved mother to cancer. She is obliged to fulfill her mother’s last wishes before enrolling in a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her mother made a transformational journey to Italy when she was young, and her request is that Lina should follow in her footsteps. Careful Lina can find a way to worry about anything, but proudly she agrees to spend her summer in Rome.
Lina is inevitably impressed by the beauty of the city — its food, its scenery, and above all, its cute begging boys. She is crazy about Alessandro (Saul Nanni). Alessandro is a blue-eyed sociable butterfly heading for the fall of Boston. And so that Alessandro doesn’t prove too nice and untrue, the warmly welcoming chef Lorenzo (Tobia de Angelis) is interested in the charm of her underwater fish. Guided by her mother’s old friend and Lorenzo, Lina found her purpose in Italy and dared to find the Italian father left by her mother.
This is a story of characters naive and persuading each other without art, and the film is shot in an equally modest way. Writer and director Brandon Camp chooses comedy tones that are cheerfully illuminated. It’s the kind of film that is more interested in the charm of good Italian accents than finding a novel or especially beautiful way to shoot and see Rome. Conscious colorness is pleasing, but lacks freshness, like midnight pasta reheated in the microwave.
Love & gelato
Unrated. Execution time: 1 hour and 50 minutes. Watch it on Netflix.
