(courtesy Italian Film Festival 2025 / Palace Cinemas)
In the whimsically storied realm of rom-coms, first dates are usually cutely delightful or awkwardly awful; either extreme works for establishing, and yes, we all know what’s coming, that this couple is MEANT FOR EACH OTHER.
It’s obvious and lacking nuance but who cares? We just want the assurance that there’s a connection and love is, somewhere down the road, usually involving an airport, that love is all but a done deal.
In Paolo Genovese’s thoroughly wonderful ode to the genre, Somebody to Love (Follemente), the road to true love is far more convoluted, even encapsulated as it is in one very eventful evening, and nakedly authentic, emotionally and otherwise, and teetering on the edge of gently hilarious disaster at almost every turn.
Starring Edoardo Leo and Pilar Fogliati as two romantic hopefuls who, having encountered each other in a cafe, agree to a first date at the latter’s apartment home, Somebody to Love (Follemente), is the realest, sweetest and most charming of rom-coms to come down the genre pike anywhere in quite some time.
It is also comedically brilliant, drawing on a richly executed Inside Out conceit to show what is going on in the minds of each of the two hopefuls, and how first dates are a minefield of befuddled moments, strange silences and misspoken words and deeds that we wish desperately we could take back.
Emanuela Fanelli, Maria Chiara Giannetta, Claudia Pandolfi and Vittoria Puccini play the four competing characters, Trilli, Scheggia, Alfa and Giueletta in Lara’s head while Marco Giallini, Maurizio Lastrico, Rocco Papaleo and Claudio Santamaria are Professore, Romeo, Valium and Eros in Piero’s handsomely ill-at-ease mind.
As the names, even in Italian suggest, each plays a particular role, with each jostling good-naturedly and not with the others to get their respective people to act on certain impulses, some far more successful than others.
Performed beautifully by eight highly talented actors in rooms aka minds that are respectively luxuriously feminine and messily masculine, what might look like a Pixar ripoff is a stroke of both comic genius and heartfelt wonder, an insight into what really goes on when people embark on the hopefully minefield of a first date.
When you think about it, first dates are a strange and volatile creation.
Whereas most first impressions aren’t loaded with any more pressure than to make small talk and not look like a complete idiot – sure, that’s pressure but if it works, great, if not, usually no harm, no foul – but a first date is an altogether different animal, coming laden with so much expectation and naked hope that it’s a wonder any of them fly at all.
And to be honest, there are so many moments in the gem of a film that is Somebody to Love (Follemente) that you wonder if Piero and Lara will make it at all.
But then, running through the film, even from the hilariously funny beginning where Piero’s four voices are competing to decide what type and colour of condom he should purchase, is a sure and steady sense that here are two people meant to be together.
It’s far from a given and there are real moments where you could be forgiven for thinking it’s all over; neither Piero or Lara does anything truly odd or deal breaking but they are real and honest and that can be death in the context of a first date.
I mean, sure, you want to see what the other person is really like but then you also don’t, and so, your mind is a hamster wheel of competing impulses – PR yourself to the nth degree, share some heartfelt thoughts, wear your heart on your sleeve but be super cool doing it.
This is where the eight characters, split between the two romantic hopefuls absolutely come into their deliciously funny and wholly affecting own.
They give voice, in ways that are so honest to all the thoughts and feelings that go through anyone’s head in a first date situation, and it’s because we can see what Piero and Lara are thinking and feeling beyond their charmingly awkward thoughts and deeds, that we really identify and relate to these perfectly imperfect and absolutely meant for each other people.
Piero, a divorced father of one daughter and furniture restorer Lara are two people wanting to find their person – someone who love fluffy bathmats, sleeping in, lazy breakfasts in bed and just being authentic with each other.
It’s that last need that really dominates Somebody to Love (Follemente) in the best possible way.
Each leaks authenticity to their great chagrin at multiple, highly regretted points during the night, but it’s only when they, rather riskily, let down their guard that true intimacy and connection actually flows.
The relief and delight, quietly expressed and gently, sweetly humourous, on their faces is a happy, charming joy and at that point, everyone of us who craves real connection with someone else, who wants all the bullshit to drop by and real, emotional honesty without games and performances to be gone, will relate so hard to Lara and Piero and their hugely eventful first date.
On a personal date, this reviewer knew he had found The One when, on a drive somewhere with their possible new love, they were a little too honest about something – yes, the characters in my mind were screaming “WTF DUDE?!” – and all my now partner did was embrace it all.
It’s wondrous and freeing and so thrilling when it happens; it’s what true love should be and when it comes to Lara and Piero, Somebody to Love (Follemente) vaults from being just a brilliantly, whimsically sweet and funny rom-com with a playful cute soundtrack (which includes a superbly done, perfectly timed post-orgasmic rendition of the titular song by Queen) to something deeper and more meaningful, the two layers sitting so perfectly and movingly with each other than you find your heart soaring every bit as our lovely protagonists.
Somebody to Love (Follemente) is a gem of a rom-com, a film that is undoubtedly funny and mischievous and silly in the best ways but which carries a ton of emotional heft as it takes us, and its two main characters on their first, and likely last first date of their lives and steals our hearts, and theirs, right along with it.