Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home Culture

THE MANUAL OF LOVE (Manuale d’amore):

byStaff writers
9 April 2006
Reading Time: 2 mins read
AA
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Starring: Silvio Muccino, Jasmine Trinca and Margherita Buy (Italian with English subtitles)
Director: Directed by Giovanni Veronesi
Rated: M

THE Manual of Love was Italy’s number one box office hit for 2005.

The Italian cinema knows how to play to its audience, reinforcing its own national stereotypes.

In a sense this is a classic Italian film, all about finding love, losing love and going after forbidden love.

This film claims to chronicle the phases of being in love. It is in four parts: “Falling in Love”, “The Crisis”, “The Betrayal” and “The Abandonment”.

It is, by our standards, a rather bleak assessment.

To illustrate each phase we follow four stories that, generally, only intersect indirectly.

Tommaso (Silvio Muccino) falls head over heels with Giulia (Jasmine Trinca).

He stalks her until she goes out with him, and he can convince her to take his proposal for marriage seriously. I wondered why she bothered.

After an initially happy marriage Barbara (Margherita Buy) and Marco (Sergio Rubini) experience a major crisis in their relationship.

Related Stories

‘We must act now’ – Caritas Australia chief says Ethiopian food crisis is acute

Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

Pope Francis condemns Independence Day parade attack and calls for end of violence

They take each other for granted and Barbara is bored.

She thinks a child will help them overcome the staleness of their relationship. Poor kid!

Ornella (Luciana Littizzetto) discovers that her husband has betrayed her, and so, after a good deal of man hating, she launches into an affair, which is expected to make her happy. It doesn’t, and she comes full circle.

Goffredo (Carlo Verdone) is a pediatrician who discovers his wife is having an affair and is abandoning their marriage.

He is devastated and wonders whether life is worth living.

He buys a book The Manual of Love, which gives him hope. At last a happy story.

For a Catholic country which values the family, contemporary Italian cinema makes one film after another about love-sick Italians who are desperate to get married, and then can’t wait to bust them up by having sexual affairs with other people.

I wondered about the phases of being in love that this film left out – sacrifice, being faithful, enjoying children and growing old together with dignity and grace.

The Manual of Love is witty in a very few parts, but generally tedious, too long for this material and a profile of life’s losers looking anywhere but within themselves for the cause of their own unhappiness.

ShareTweet
Previous Post

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Next Post

Easter joy the Maronite way

Staff writers

Related Posts

Caritas Australia Richard Landels

‘We must act now’ – Caritas Australia chief says Ethiopian food crisis is acute

6 July 2022
Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women
News

Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

6 July 2022
Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.
World

Pope Francis condemns Independence Day parade attack and calls for end of violence

6 July 2022
Next Post

Easter joy the Maronite way

YCS initiates a revival in schools

World Youth Day excites

Popular News

  • Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

    Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Plans for indigenous elements, memorials to trauma, to complement Catholic liturgy

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Mass with signs of indigenous respect launch historic Plenary Council assembly

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Called to share the message of Jesus at mission school

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Caritas Australia Richard Landels

‘We must act now’ – Caritas Australia chief says Ethiopian food crisis is acute

by Hannah Kennelly
6 July 2022
0

RITAS Australia chief executive officer Kirsty Robertson has called for an immediate response for ugent famine prevention...

Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

6 July 2022
Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.

Pope Francis condemns Independence Day parade attack and calls for end of violence

6 July 2022
Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

6 July 2022
‘For the moment, no,’ – Pope Francis dismisses resignation rumours in wide-ranging interview

‘For the moment, no,’ – Pope Francis dismisses resignation rumours in wide-ranging interview

5 July 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping