This intricately woven story centers on four buddies who are all about 30 years old and who are starting to think about settling into a more serious phase of their lives. With rapid cuts from scene to scene, character to character, situation to situation, THE LAST KISS communicates the... [More]

This intricately woven story centers on four buddies who are all about 30 years old and who are starting to think about settling into a more serious phase of their lives. With rapid cuts from scene to scene, character to character, situation to situation, THE LAST KISS communicates the breathless anxiety of striving to hold on to the fleeting feeling of carefree youth. Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) is young, handsome, smart, and in love with Giulia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), his girlfriend of five years who is three months pregnant. Carlo and Giulia are happy together, though they are still unmarried. But when Carlo meets blond, naive, 18-year-old Francesca (Martina Stella), he sees one last chance to sew his wild oats. Giulia has her own troubles to deal with, as her mother, Anna (Stefania Sandrelli), admits she is unhappily married to Giulia's father and is contemplating a divorce. Meanwhile, Carlo's friends encounter their own unique obstacles. Adriano (Giorgio Pasotti) constantly fights with his wife (Sabrina Impacciatore), ever since the birth of their infant son; Paolo (Claudio Santamaria), a dreadlocked Don Juan, sleeps with a different girl every night; and Alberto (Marco Cocci) rejects his responsibility in the family business, accepts the death of his father, and regroups after losing the love of his life. Particularly poignant are the repeated scenes of the four friends standing side by side in a waterfall where they gather for nighttime meetings. They pop open champagne bottles, spraying the bubbly liquid, and scream their wildest dreams into the black night sky above. In reality, these five men want nothing more than to settle down and live peacefully. They have all begun to lay down the roots of their future lives, but they hesitate to nourish them. Through various conflicts and solutions, testing limits and making choices, they each find a new maturity and a new direction. In a way, Gabriele Muccino's THE LAST KISS is a comedy about infidelity and fear of commitment, which is really more painful than it is funny. That idea is explored thoroughly, and in the end it is resolved with difficult but realistic honesty. [Less]