Avanti!

Wendell Ambruster (Jack Lemmon), a pushy American corporate executive, flies to the island of Ischia to claim the body of his father, who has died in a car crash while vacationing there. Wendell's plans to return immediately to Baltimore for the funeral are complicated by governmental red tape and the long Italian weekend. Wendell's irritation continues after the hotel manager Carlucci (Clive Revill) informs him that his father died with a woman in his car, and he's further horrified upon learning from Pamela Pigott (Juliet Mills), a chubby Englishwoman who's the dead woman's daughter, that her mother was Wendell's father's longtime mistress. After Wendell rejects Pamela's suggestion that the illicit lovers be buried together on the island, their bodies disappear from the morgue and Wendell suspects that Pamela is responsible, but it turns out that a family of Italian vintners has taken the corpses hostage to coerce Wendell to pay for the damages to their vineyards that the car crash caused.

After paying up, Wendell returns to the hotel and reluctantly joins Pamela in a ritual tribute to their parents, skinny dipping at dawn, but a hotel porter named Bruno (Gianfranco Barra) photographs them and tries to use the pictures to blackmail Wendell into helping him escape to America to get away from his pregnant girlfriend, Anna (Giselda Castrini), the hotel maid. However, Anna overhears this and shoots Bruno dead in Pamela's room. When Carlucci moves Pamela into Wendell's room during the police investigation, Pamela and Wendell sleep together, but have to cut short their affair when J.J. Blodgett (Edward Andrews), a friend of Wendell's from the US State Department, suddenly arrives at the request of Wendell's wife to help expedite his return. Wendell and Pamela devise a plan to bury their parents on the island by putting Bruno's corpse into the "diplomatic" coffin J.J. has brought, and before saying goodbye, they vow to return to the island the following summer and carry on their parents' tradition.

Stylistically mirroring the spiritual transformation of its protagonists and its theme of rejuvenation, AVANTI! is like a leisurely sun-drenched vacation which one begins feeling cranky and tired and emerges refreshed and invigorated. Shamefully underrated when it was released and attacked for being overlong and dated, the film's critics seem to have completely missed the point that these very qualities are intrinsic to Wilder's strategy to dramatize the essential conflict between Old World European charm--with its three-hour lunch breaks and relaxed pace ("Here, we take out time, cook our pasta, make our love." "What do you do at night?" "We go home to our wife") -- and the rat race of the Ugly American, personified by the obnoxious, finger-snapping Wendell who has no time to enjoy life and has a set of ulcers to prove it. Based on a play by Samuel Taylor (whose earlier play was the basis for Wilder's classic SABRINA), the film observes the door-slamming rules of stage farces, with its exchanged hotel room keys and misplaced luggage, while Wilder and cowriter I.A.L. Diamond add numerous subplots and their usual quota of smart lines ("I'm considered a pretty groovy cat" says Wendell to the unimpressed Pamela), contemporary cultural references (ranging from Nixon and "Batman" to a group of nuns lined up to see LOVE STORY), and colorful peripheral characters (the fastidious coroner; an erstwhile Mussolini supporter who gives J.J. a fascist salute; and the hilariously inbred family of vintners).

The breathtaking location photography and the bouncy score contribute to an intoxicating sense of amore, helping to make the viewer succumb to the liberating Mediterranean atmosphere in the same way that Wendell and Pamela do. The acting is also a joy, with Lemmon giving one of his most mature and least mannered comic performances, and the lovely Mills (who gained 25 lbs. for the role) completely captivating, while both Clive Revill and Edward Andrews offer hilarious support, and the large roster of Italian character actors is exceptionally well cast.

Discussing the film years later, Wilder attributed its failure to the fact that it was "too soft," claiming that the audience of the time wanted Peckinpah and he was giving them Lubitsch, yet it's this very softness that accounts for the film's genuine charm, with the famously cynical Wilder letting his guard down and welcoming in the audience, just as the uptight Wendell and Pamela do before their first kiss when he repeatedly says "permisso" until she finally answers "avanti." (Profanity, nudity, sexual situations.) leave a comment