Mascarpone

Synopsis:  Man rebuilds his life after his husband leaves him; he gets work at a bakery where he aims to make the perfect mascarpone. (Streaming on Amazon Prime as of June 2023)

Tiramisù, what would you be without mascarpone? Well, you’d still be full of espresso-dipped “ladyfinger” cakes and dusted with cocoa. So, you’d still be delicious.

Enter Antonio (Giancarlo Commare)… a thirty-year-old Roman who’s an enthusiastic amateur baker. While his husband is at work, we see him baking ladyfingers and trying to perfect the mascarpone that he’ll lavish between cake layers. 

I looked up recipes online and found a “classic” tiramisù recipe that included a bowl of mascarpone cheese whipped with cream, another bowl of whipped egg yolks and sugar, with both mixtures folded together. Cue the comments…  there is no cream in tiramisù… worried about the raw eggs… ignore the purists… fear of raw eggs is irrational. Conclusion? Tiramisù wouldn’t be tiramisù without mascarpone (or a vegan version of it), but it would still be delicious.

When Antonio’s husband, Lorenzo (Carlo Calderone) returns from work, he ignores Antonio and the dessert. He’s preoccupied. Antonio asks what’s wrong. Work, replies Lorenzo. We can sense that he’s buying time, but not credulous Antonio. Then, Lorenzo continues,  I haven’t been happy at work. Or home.

Thus begins Antonio’s odyssey to find a new place to lay his head and make his mascarpone. At first, he reasons that Lorenzo –who has a new lover– will come to his senses. He decides to appear resigned to their breakup while looking for a short-term rental. When he checks out an apartment share, he tells Denis (Eduardo Valdarnini), the roomie-landlord, that he’ll probably only need the place for a month. 

At lunch the next day, he sobs to his friend Cristina (Michela Giraud). (In the old rom-coms featuring a straight woman who’s been ditched by her bf, said girl would be reassured by her gay male best friend.) She’s supposed to be his best friend, but she basically tells him he needs to move on. Umm, the breakup was 24 hours ago. Instead of giving him a shoulder to cry on, she arranges a blind date for him at a bathhouse. Antonio showed up because he thought it would be a platonic evening between the two of them. Cristina assures him this bathhouse has no “crabs.” I don’t know if fear of crabs is a thing in Italy, but Brazil has made significant contributions to public (pubic) health with waxing trends, so Antonio might be okay.

But he’s not into sexing up with this guy he’s just met. Turns out he had been with his husband since they were teens. When his date ambles over to a massage bed –DIY, folks– Antonio can only giggle when the man awkwardly massages his calf.

Back at his new place, Antonio sulks and sighs. Denis advises him to get a job. But Antonio trained as an architect and doesn’t have the will to get back into the field. Now, Denis either doesn’t have a job himself; or he’s a sex worker who buys drugs or a drug dealer who hooks up a lot. It seems that Denis doesn’t leave the apartment. He’s usually lazing around the apartment in a short yellow kimono. He’s sassy and vain, but we can see he has potential as a friend, because he actually gets dressed so that he can bring Antonio to meet a baker friend of his who needs an apprentice. 

So, the bakery seems like it might be an all-gay-men place. The owner, Luca (Gianmarco Saurino) takes his work seriously and insists that Antonio make all the bread to exacting standards. Luca takes his play as seriously as he does his work. I don’t know what a health inspector would think of this, but Luca does some shagging on site, among the flour sacks. This doesn’t seem sanitary. Or safe — The hot trays! Fa’ attenzione! 

Antonio may be making progress on his baking at the apartment– well, mostly. Denis teases him for not being able to get a rainbow cake right. Antonio halfheartedly gets on dating apps. Everyone tells him he missed out on all the men he should have been having sex with in his twenties.

Friends try to prepare him with dating advice… #1 Don’t talk about your ex. #2 Don’t mix your online friends with your real life friends. #3 App hook-ups are one “date” only. Antonio doesn’t understand the last rule, but friends assure him that even the guys who say they want a relationship will ghost him. Yeah, this sounds pretty universal in the dating world.

Will Antonio -who’s really cute and sweet– win back his ex? Will he want to once he gets going with the dating apps? Will he get serious about architecting again? Or perfect his mascarpone?

This quote from Antonio’s nonna holds a clue. His grandma said: Mascarpone has a special taste if you make it yourself. Life lesson or pastry lesson? I don’t know, but if I were you, I’d plan on getting some tiramisù (too complicated to make, just go to a good bakery) to go along with your movie night. Or at least throw together a coffee mug brownie to microwave.

Movie Loon Quick Movie Review:

Grade:  B

Cut to the Chase: Giancarlo Commare is low-key charming as Antonio. And, as long as you aren’t offended by nudity, the movie is an amusing take on millennial love. I can only imagine how Generation Z operates!

Humor Highlight: When Antonio is warned away from talking about his ex with a date, he asks: What else would we talk about?