Avanti!

Wendell Armbruster, an American businessman, learns his father has died in Italy and goes to collect the body. What he finds on the island shakes him: his father had come to the same hotel every summer for ten years and there had always been the same Englishwoman with him. Now her daughter is there too, and the two of them died together. Billy Wilder builds it as a comedy of funeral paperwork, with bureaucracy, Italian bribery and a hotel manager who can arrange anything as the engine. Jack Lemmon leads. The idea is plain: while judging his father's life the man notices how empty his own is. It belongs to Wilder's late period and runs long. Who it is for: viewers who like Billy Wilder comedies and romance that opens slowly. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace, since this passes two hours with little incident.