Eat, pray, love: a book and a movie filled with clichés

"Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia" is a biographic roman written by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. The story tells about the author’s trip and adventures around the world across Italy, India and Indonesia after her anguished divorce. Gilbert’s book remained on The New York Times best seller list for over 180 weeks. Thanks to the success of the book, Columbia Pictures produced a film version, starred by Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem in 2010. Despite the success of the book and the relating film, that has got a great audience, the story appears trivial and full of banal clichés (at least for the parts concerning the Italian days, but it is not difficult to deduce that it could be the same thing for the other countries). It is true that Gilbert has actually visited Italy, she has been in Rome for a while and has attended an Italian language school in Rome as well. For this reason it is difficult to understand why her tale is full of banal and ridiculous references and common places. This is dangerous, because her story tells something about Italy (and about all the Italian culture) that is not correct and not real.

A simple example: according to her tale, the Italians live all together in large families with parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents in the same house, like if the Italians didn't know the words "independence" or "intimacy". What she tells on her book could happen in the past (in the 18th century families of Southern Italy), but this doesn't happen anymore. For these and other reasons it is very difficult to understand who Gilbert used to talk to during her travel in Italy. Another strange and inappropriate aspect of the story (both film and movie) is the relationship between the Italians and food! Yes, everybody knows the strong connection and the high consideration by the Italians for good food, but here the Italians are described as a population that has nothing to do if eating. The Italians are described as people who only eat, walk down the streets and lose their time speaking.

Another aspect concerns the language: in Gilbert's tale, the Italian words and sentences are completely incorrect. If she had attended an Italian language school in Rome, she would have learned at least the most important Italian words, many useful things about the Italian culture and she would have avoided ridiculous mistakes.

Here, you can find the opinions by some of the most authoritative journalists and writers in Italy who expressed their point of view about the film:

1. "The only thing missing in Julia’s Rome is the mandolin," commented the daily La Repubblica.
2. "It rains spaghetti, the Italians are always gesticulating and following foreign girls shouting vulgarities but then getting engaged to a nice housewife to please their domineering mothers, all this under the sign of "dolce far niente" lifestyle" was Curzio Maltese comment, critic journalist for "La Repubblica" newspaper.
3. The Turin La Stampa journal defined the film, as "kitsch" regretting that the Italian actors in the cast were left drawing on retro images of Italy from the 1950s. "That’s the way they like us in the United States, dark, boisterous, uninhibited; we’ve always known that, but this time the effect is beyond the limits." Il Messagero daily journal said it was not particularly bothered by the cliched portrayal of invasive mothers, nosy landladies and pleasure-loving Italians but it was offended by Roberts’ Spanish co-star Javier Bardem.

If the book's author had attended a good Italian language school and classes about Italian culture, she would have learned at least the most important Italian words, many useful things about the Italian culture and she would have avoided ridiculous mistakes.

Ilaria Sabrini - teacher and blogger. I was born in the United States, but I've spend in Italy most of my life. I'm a language teacher and a travel blogger.