Film

Avanti! (1972)

Director: Billy Wilder

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A sunny black comedy about a stuffy American who meets an overweight Englishwoman on the tourist paradise of Ischia. Each has come to claim the body of a deceased parent - his father, her mother - only to discover that the dead pair were lovers and to find history inexorably repeating itself. The humour (derived largely from un-stereotypical national stereotypes, plus the inexhaustible confusion over luggage, hotel accommodations and bureaucratic red tape) is sometimes a little leisurely, while the camera has a tendency to linger over the travelogue scenery. But any longueurs are more than made up for by the same strangely moving undercurrent of tenderness that Wilder brought to The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Marvellous performances from Lemmon and Mills.

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