Review of Venice/Venice

Venice/Venice (1992)
Watching annoying people can be mildly fun.
13 October 2007
This is not such a bad movie, although I'm torn between hating it and liking it. The dialogues are obviously heavily influenced by Altman and Woody Allen, i.e. meant to sound spontaneous, realistic and witty, which is often a two-edged sword; this style makes the dialogues interesting to follow but makes the characters highly annoying, i.e. there's rarely anyone to sympathize with at all, and that is practically the case here, too. Woody Allen's movies also have this trait: irritating but interesting characters.

The story reveals a huge ego behind the script, much like with Allen's movies. Jaglom is a narcissist at best, and a deluded egomaniac at worst. His character (basically himself, or how he would like to see himself, but with a fictional name) is that of a renowned director (ego alert!) who visits a European festival (pretentiousness alert!), where he meets a fairly attractive female fan who wants to meet him (ego alert!). Male fantasy, anyone? Jaglom is not only the central character here, but he lives out his fantasies of being a major director, plus some female worship of His Highness, His Jaglomity, thrown in for good measure. Of course, Allen is just as bad, if not worse; in how many Allen movies does he go out with women who are approximately 10,000 times better-looking than him? (Numbers lose all meaning in this case.) The difference is, however, that Allen's movies are usually comedies which are usually funny, while Jaglom's "V/V" is basically a relationship movie with a smaller dose of humour.
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