Tutta colpa di Freud (Blame Freud)(失戀家族)

It's never easy to be a father, especially if one is widower with three daughters all of whom are looking for love at various ages, each with her unique personality and preferences. We see the hilarious Woody Allen type of nervous self-doubt and self-analysis and often analysis by others in the impossible life of Francesco Taramelli (Marco Gialini) , a Freudian psychotherapist in Paolo Genovese's Tutta colpa di Freud (Blame Freud)(失戀家族) (2014) for which he co-wrote the film script with Leonardo Pieraccioni and Paolo Mammimi.


Taramelli is father to Marta,(Vittoria Puccini) who runs the family book-store and in love with a deaf-mute book thief Fabio (Vinicio Marchioni); Sara ( Anna Foglietta) who is tom-boyish lesbian who has just been dumped by her latest girl friend Claudia (Claudia Gerini) to whom she has just made a marriage proposal and as a result of which trauma, has decided on a change of sexuality by becoming a heterosexual and was starting to make fumbling and bumbling attempts to act as a girl vis-a-vis guys, with the sympathetic assistance of her sisters and her father and Emma (Laura Adriani ),an 18-year-old who has decided to fall in love with a 50-year-old childless architect Alessandro (Alessandro Gassman ) married to Barbara (Giulia Bevilacqua) . 

The film is literally a mini archive of the most intimate details of the love lives of the now more open minded contemporary Italian women of all ages, but with a twist and plenty of good laughs. Whilst the psycho-analyst is busy counseling his daughters on how to work out the ups and downs of their often unsuccessful amorous adventures and whilst doing his best to be non-judgmental and supportive, he found himself irresistibly attracted to Barbara, the wife of his non-paying "client", Alessandro, whom he was also trying to "help", in his own fatherly interest, mend the latter's relations with his wife, something he did behind the back of his teenage daughter Emma. Obviously, when Emma found that out, that precipitated a mini father-daughter crisis, but as with all teenage rage, it probably wouldn't last long. In the end, whilst following Francesco's advice to destroy everything related to his wife so that he could make a clean start with Emma, he found mementos of his marriage ceremony with the young Barbara and many photos of their happy times together, something which gave him cause for rethinking whether he really wanted to put a definitive full full stop to their relationship. 

I love this film. I love the vivacity and effusiveness of the Italian character skilfully portrayed in this film, albeit it from a very original angle. I love also the little ironies of life which Paolo Genovese manages to slip into the film. In the end, only one of Taramelli's daughters achieved "salvation", Sara, the eldest, who went out of her way to learn deaf-mute language in order to communicate with the sensitive Fabio, who after a lot of misunderstandings, finally offered his love to Sara by inviting her to a front row seat in the empty opera house where he worked as the admission usher in which he stepped on stage and with the help of an old record player sang to her his love song, a very moving ending to the film.

Not a little of the credit must go to the actors and actresses especially those in the Taramelli family and the Vinicio Marchioni, who played the deaf-mute.  The editing is excellent: there's never a dull moment in this fast paced but touching psycho-comedy.