Brothel to Broth

Love a la Carte. As a veteran prostitute who has given up amore for omeletti, Simone Signoret lays down the house rules to her staff. "This is a restaurant, at least for the time being--don't waggle so much," she tells one hip-swiveling waitress. Borrowing its theme from a 1958 Italian law banning legalized brothels, Love purports to show what happens when four harlots open a restaurant in the country. Theirs is a modest establishment, designed to keep the girls off the street until they dare to resume plying their old trade upstairs.

Surprisingly, the trattoria prospers, bringing unexpected fringe benefits. Signoret finds that she can still feel prudish about free love with a ne'er-do-well used-car salesman (Marcello Mastroianni). A neurotic colleague (Emmanuelle Riva) brings her son home to live for the first time. Another girl (Gina Rovere) meets a local construction man willing to help her build a new life. Then, inescapably, the past looms up to destroy all hope for a better future.

In the film's bitter finale, Signoret hopelessly pounds the pavement on a rainy night in Rome, bragging, jeered at, and aged so noticeably that one motorist splashes right by her to pick up a greener jade. The scene is played to perfection but to no avail. Made in 1960, Love is both dubbed (Italian for French) and flubbed. Director Antonio Pietrangeli squanders several major talents on a saccharine social tract in which the line between solving problems and pandering to them remains handily blurred.

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