"I'm a man. I got a lot of hormones in my body”: The Italian man in Kasdan's I Love You to Death

The perpetuation of representations of Italians and Americans of Italian descent in Hollywood cinema has contributed to the creation of stereotyped images of Italian Americans, among which the stereotype of the womanizer. In the book “Hollywood Italians”, Bondanella (2004) dedicates a whole chapter to the image of the Latin lover (whom he refers to as the Romeo), analyzing its development, from the films starring Rudolph Valentino to more recent example. The characters conforming to the stereotype of the Latin lover usually present a series of features that are recurrent in all films starring Italians, such as the importance of food, of the family, and of their origins. However, they put special stress on those peculiarities that make them clearly identifiable as womanizers, namely the importance of masculinity, their vision of women and their attitudes towards them. This paper will deal with this stereotype taking the film I love you to death as a case study. The film is an American comedy directed by Lawrence Kasdan in 1990. It tells the story of Joey Boca, an Italian American pizza chef, who is married to Rosalie, a woman of Yugoslavian descent, but has numerous lovers. When Rosalie finds out about Joey’s unfaithfulness, she is devastated, but rather than divorcing and leaving him free to have other women, she plans to kill him with the help of her mother and her young friend Devo, who works with them at the pizzeria. The character of Joey perfectly embodies the stereotype of the Italian womanizer. Moreover, the film is a comedy and consequently all the distinctive traits of the character are accentuated and overemphasized for comic purposes. The paper will analyze the elements that characterize Joey as a Romeo, from a narrative, visual, and linguistic perspective.