10 regole per fare innamorare: Bortone's comedy with YouTube star Willwoosh

by Vittoria Scarpa

15/03/2012 - Fausto Brizzi's award-winning company strikes again. A few weeks before the release of Com'è bello far l'amore [trailer] (read the news), the tireless confectioner of successful romantic comedies has created the subject and screenplay for a new humorous film about love: 10 regole per fare innamorare [trailer], in cinemas from March 16 in 250 copies (distribution KeyFilms).

Directing is Cristiano Bortone (who wrote the film together with Brizzi), the author we had left back in 2006 with a feature of an entirely different genre and depth, Rosso come il cielo [trailer] (see the news), and whom we find now having succumbed to the call of the reigning genre of Italian cinema, comedy. "After the serious films, I wanted a bit of lightness," the director confesses "so, together with my friend Brizzi we had the idea to joke about certain self-help manuals that dictate the rules of love."

The inevitable impression that you're watching a film with a rather trite subject (a shy and awkward young guy tries to win the heart of the beautiful and impossible young girl, with the help of his flat-mates and his father, a womaniser - the unmissable Vincenzo Salemme - who shows him the handbook of the perfect seducer), is compensated by the fresh touch brought by the young protagonist, 24-year-old Guglielmo Scilla (photo, right), web star whose humorous YouTube videos posted under the pseudonym Willwoosh today register 45m viewings.

"The cinema is not a new start. I'm staying on the web and we'll see what else happens", says the breezy young actor, who bears an extraordinary resemblance to Jack Black, minus a few years and kilos. Meanwhile, the young Scilla is not short of an audience. "I used to travel long distances on the bus to show myself to a theatre of max 30 people", Salemme jokes, "now you reach millions of them in an instance". And now, over to the box office...

(Translated from Italian)