Last night, I watched
Room In Rome. I just finished re-watching it, and I think I finally have an opinion on it.
Room In Rome is a movie that bills itself, in both its official synopsis and trailer, about two women meeting up at a bar and having passionate sex and then never seeing each other again. This is a lie, but that's okay, because it is, centrally, a movie about lying. (nb: there is a lot of sex in the movie but it's shot and scored in such a way as to make it almost pedestrian; the characters use sex as a way of escaping from the far more interesting and emotionally vulnerable conversations they keep having. The use of nudity throughout the film might seem purely titillating to some but I think it has some very important things to do with the theme of vulnerability the rest of the story explores.)
Early on, the woman who introduces herself as Natasha says "What, you mean you told me your real name?" and laughs. This, I think, is where the movie actually begins. It is revealed over a large laminated map of caesar's rome that Alba's hotel room (the setting for the entire movie) is over where a roman theatre used to be. The question of acting comes up again throughout Natasha's development of the plot, and Medem (the director) does a ton of stuff with maps as an overarching theme (including a puzzling Bing-branded google earth lookalike that ends up being fairly important to the plot of the second half of the movie). He's not terribly subtle about this, either; Alba compliments the "cartography of [Natasha's] skin" in an early scene that I thought was confusing until I rewatched it.
It's beautifully shot, and somehow a single hotel room manages to not be a confining environment. There's a lot of stuff about renaissance art as prompts for the (real or invented) stories the two women tell each other, and there's some really massive use of reflections to underscore the basic theme of the story (in a really pivotal scene, we
only see the two women's faces in the bathroom mirror, while they talk to each other's reflection), as well as the more subtle reflection of stories through the art lining the room's walls. Both women lie about whether or not they're actresses pretty early on, which helps the viewer to make these connections. I've seen arthouse movies where the only way to actually 'get' the movie is to go and read the director's commentary after watching it, Room In Rome is kind and patient watchers should get most of it the first time through (and even more the second).
Room In Rome is a weird movie, but nevertheless I think a pretty good one, a lot deeper than a number of criticisms I read online seem to get. This is, I think, because it bills itself as something it isn't, but that's not a weakness, that's a strength. It's a fucked up movie with fucked up characters and the acting is
incredible and the score (except for the oddly-recurring-forever theme song "Loving Strangers") does a really good job.
I think it's a very good movie that rewards critical monster cockysis, with a few weak spots (sometimes Medem forgets about subtlety, the fucking chorus of the theme song plays probably six or seven times (and while this
is a setup for the end of the movie where we hear one of the verses I think it's too much work for not enough payoff), and sometimes the symbolism is a little heavy-handed) that get balanced out by the absolutely fucking incredible work by both leads (but especially the woman who plays Alba). Also there are attractive people without clothes on and they occasionally have sex with each other so I guess that's a plus as well.
If this sounds at all interesting to you, it's on Netflix.
