“Being Italian is living in denial” is the most quotable line of the silly Canadian film Mambo Italiano, directed by Émile Gaudreault. Two themes are mixed together. One is the experience of growing up Italian within a family, including father Gino (played by Paul Sorvino) and mother María (played by Ginette Reno), who migrated from Italy to Montréal, carrying with them a lot of superego phobias about face and respect. The other theme is finding out that one is gay, but of course gay within an Italian homophobic family. At the center of the soap opera is Angelo, whose best friend as a child was his mother’s sister Yolanda (played by Tara Nicodemo). After dancing the mambo with him at home, she died under mysterious circumstances in her mid-thirties. As a young boy, Angelo also enjoyed playing with a delightful friend, Nino Paventi. But Nino abandoned that friendship in high school when a nasty rumor spread that non-macho Angelo was gay. According to Italian tradition, we are told, children leave the home of their parents only when they either marry or die. After graduating from school, twentysomething Angelo (played by Luke Kirby) and his former friend Nino (played by Peter Miller) are unmarried, as is Angelo’s sister Anna (played by Claudia Ferri), all of whom are tormented by the dictates of their parents, who spin guilt trips on everyone so thick that they exist in neurotic cocoons, unable to lead independent lives. Angelo, for example, is so accustomed to a negative environment that he insults customers in his job as computer reservations clerk, and his attempt at writing screenplays as a possible alternative occupation is a flop. Unable to attract men, Anna sees psychiatrists and takes valium. Angelo and Nino stay at home and take the abuse, which mother and father also dish out to each other, doubtless because the father is stuck at a dead-end job that he hates. One day, Angelo decides to make a “jail break.” He announces to his distraught parents that he will live alone in his own apartment. Shortly after his liberation, he meets adult Nino, who is a hunky police officer, and they get together for old time’s sake on a camping trip. Suddenly, Nino takes the initiative to have sex, and soon they are living together as a couple, but Angelo wants love and Nino just wants sex. Indeed, Nino wants the fact that they are gay kept a secret, not only to preserve respect with his fellow police officers but also with his homophobic single mother Lina (played by Mary Walsh). Frustrated at living in a closeted sex-only relationship, Angelo wants to out the relationship so that he can enjoy a real gay lover. One evening he does so to his parents in response to their continued verbal abuse about his new living arrangement. His mother than blabs to Lina, upsetting Nino, so he goes to a straight pickup bar, meets a former unmarried classmate, Rosetta (played by Pierrette Robitaille), and contemplates going straight. One evening, Nino’s mother invites Lina as an unexpected guest to a dinner arranged by Angelo’s parents. Nino is then caught in a triangle, with Angelo and Lina demanding to know which of the two is his choice. Nino quickly decides to break up with Angelo. In the next few weeks later, Angelo desperately tries to rekindle the relationship, but his efforts boomerang. To end Angelo’s advances, Nino decides to get married, which of course simplifies choices for Angelo, as he is now free to look for another partner. Angelo is not only successful in his search but in time regains the support of his parents and achieves his ambition to be a serious TV scriptwriter (by turning the story of his dysfunctional family into a successful sit-con that even amuses his parents). As for Nino, he has every prospect of living with a dominating wife who can refer pejoratively to his former gay relationship to trump any assertions of his independence, but that eventuality is neither stated nor even implied in the film despite his later gay liaison on a camping trip. He is depicted as a bisexual who picks up men and drops them unapologetically to preserve his macho self-image. Mambo Italiano says that mental health is promoted by outing oneself as gay rather than trying to please those who are homophobic, hardly a novel message. One line in the film perhaps gives away the biggest mistake in the script, which tries to turn the successful comedy of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) upside down into the tragicomedy of Mambo Italiano: Instead of clever Greek wit and inventive problemsolving, there are just too many crude Italian insults and slaps. Perhaps the stage play on which the film is based, written by Steve Gallucio, has better timing to produce real humor. When straight couples at a West Hollywood screening emit much more laughter than gays, one must conclude that the plot is too retro to make a serious contribution as a gay-oriented film. MH