Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World (Amori che non sanno stare al mondo)

Like peeling a bandage off slowly, inch by excruciating inch, watching Claudia struggle through coming to terms with the end of her relationship with Flavio is painful. Through flashbacks, viewers see Claudia as an almost unbearably insistent romantic partner, while we learn very little about Flavio other than that he appears to be remarkably patient. She's constantly nagging and in need of validation and reassurance; he's emotionally distant and seemingly indifferent. After the breakup, she turns obsessive, and he turns to a younger woman. Both Claudia and Flavio play up some of the worst gender stereotypes around men and women in relationships. A scene in which a supposed university professor details the calculations that determine the dating age equivalency between men and women (for women, automatically add 15 years above the man's age, add more for each child from a previous relationship, take away years for plastic surgery, and so on) is comedic but demeaning.

The movie's only saving grace comes at the end, when we finally see Claudia become empowered, though there's very little detail in Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World about her journey toward personal growth. She hints that she realizes how Flavio played his part in their dysfunction, but she doesn't delve too deep, and this all seems too little, too late. The takeaway message seems to be that men are selfish pigs who don't really know how -- or aren't willing -- to truly satisfy women, and that women are destined to pine for them regardless. All in all, not a great picture for teens learning about relationships.