Streaming cinema of the past decade has been littered with wish fulfillment fantasy teen romances. Netflix perfected the formula — affluent settings, carefree partying and hooking up in the clubs, on beaches and in mansions while “my parents are out of town.”
As Hollywood theatrical studios abandoned this genre and the international cinema never bothered to compete for that audience, Netflix found itself a winning niche. They proceeded to clone this formula in films made in Spain, France, Italy and elsewhere.
It’s the Italian titles that stand out in my mind. Movies like “The Tearsmith,” “Under the Amalfi Sun,” “Out of My League” and “Still Out of My League” upped the lurid ante in terms of sex and skin and sin.
But MGM/Amazon proves it can be just as trashy with the Milan-set private school romance “Love Me, Love Me.”
It’s got sex, MMA fighting, a multi-national cast of “kids” and cliques and nightclubs and clueless parents and steroid abuse.
Time and again, the screenwriters and director give us a hint that “reality” doesn’t figure into this school or its Shakespeare-quoting/street bike wheely-popping coeds, and that maybe they don’t know how steroids work and how long it takes for “roid rage” to kick in either.
Mia Jenkins plays June, a Brit abroad, new to Saint Mary’s International School and new to Milan, where her widowed artist-mom (Elizabeth Kinnear) has moved them.
She falls for tall, attentive Will (Luca Melucci). But his hunky bestie James Hunter (Pepe Barroso) is rude, arrogant and sexually aggressive. The last straw with him should be her accidentally spilling her macchioto on him and his brusque way of grabbing her and dragging her into the boy’s locker room — showers included — where he strips and demands she wash his clothes.
That blast of Italian sexism comes from the English-speaking Spaniard who has learned Italian cultural machismo and June is repelled.
“You disgust me!”
But a kinky bit of grinding on Mr. “I’m a lover, not a fighter” Will while James stares her down sets up the inevitable. James is who she’ll fall for.
Well, she is British and Italian Will is a “ginger,” after all. Hey, I don’t make the rules.
James takes her for a ride on his bike, but it turns out she’s a skilled rider herself. She witnesses the steroid abuse and is shaken because she “knows” this problem first hand. Their romance staggers through the dark subtexts of the plot and towards intimacy, but not through any mutual attraction that isn’t simply physical.
She can quote “Othello” to their teacher. James can’t be bothered.
The narrative slimes its way past premature ejaculation into fights in the octagon with James’ “manager” (Tommaso Caporalli) dutifully injecting him before each fight, which he then wins in a roid rage, no matter how big the foe.
The night life scenes are production designed prettiness that resembles few clubs that exist in the real world. The fights are nasty, brutish and short and the intrigues are obvious and hamfistedly-acted by one and all, because whatever the setting and the sexy costumes (makeover scenes with a new cliched gay BFF and his running mate), this is pure Netflix-variety trash with an MGM/Amazon label on it.
But at least everybody got a working vacation in Italy out of it.
Rating: 16+, violence, sex, profanity
Cast: Mia Jenkins, Pepe Barroso, Luca Melucci, Andrea Guo, Tommaso Caporalli and Elizabeth Kinnear
Credits: Directed by Roger Kumble, scripted by Veronica Galli and Serena Tateo. An MGM release on Amazon.
Running time: 1:40
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