Avanti! (1972) Reviews

This enchanting yet dark romantic comedy stars Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills as a pair of mismatched lovers helplessly drawn into a series of seemingly hopeless but humorous situations as in Lemmon's The Out-of -Towners two years earlier. Lemmon is Wendell Armbruster Jr., an overbearing American business tycoon forced to travel to the beautiful Italian island of Ischia to claim the body of his recently departed father. What begins with a rather elementary premise evolves into a succession of somber twists and turns, as Armbruster meets Pamela Piggott (Mills), the daughter of his father's mistress, who, Lemmon is appalled to learn, died alongside Armbruster Sr., while zipping through the Italian countryside in his sportscar. Even worse, the family who owns the vineyard that his father's car crashed into has stolen the bodies in exchange for damages. Although plagued with a plethora of such problems, as well as an inability to enjoy life (and the ulcers to prove it), Wendell eventually falls in love with Pamela, almost exactly as his father did with her mother. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi