Puccini for Beginners

Kirk and Mol are convincing, easily inhabiting their respective roles.

It all looks easy when it's carried off this smoothly. But as any number of stilted duds can attest, applying a Philip Barry or Woody Allen sensibility to 21st-century New Yorkers in their 30s is as delicate a craft as diamond cutting.

In the end, it's all la dolce vita no matter how you look at it.

Bisexuality certainly increases the geometric possibilities of the romantic comedy, completing its triangles and allowing for quadrangles and other, more amorphous layers of amorous involvement.

Puccini for Beginners is literate and sensitive, characterized by witty dialogue and smart, emotional two-person encounters.

Maggenti is still trapped behind surfaces, enamored of the IDEA of making a buoyant, urbane romantic comedy, while falling short of anything really resonant or personal.

Maggenti suffocates her story with dated references to every buzzword from Laura Mulvey's feminist catalog except for "the male gaze." In short, a nightmare worse than "Trust the Man."