Venice is my favorite city in Italy.

I mean, it’s such a cliché, isn’t it?  Tourists always fall in love with Venice, even though the majority of us really don’t know much about the city beyond the canals and the gondolas.  I spent a summer in Italy and Venice was definitely the city that had the most American visitors.  Sadly, the majority of them didn’t do a very good job representing the U.S. in Europe.  One night, a bunch of drunk frat boys approached me, all wearing University of Texas t-shirts.  One of them asked, “Are you from Texas?”

“No,” I lied.

“You sound like you’re from Texas!” his friend said.

“No, ah’m not from Texas,” I said, “Sorry, y’all.”

That’s not something that would have happened in Florence or even Naples!  In Rome, handsome men on motor scooters gave me flowers.  In Venice, on the other hand, I had to deal with the same jerks that I dealt with back home!

I still fell in love with Venice.  And yes, it did happen while riding in a gondola.  At that moment, I felt like I was living in a work of art.  I can still remember looking over the side of the gondola and watching as a small crab ran across someone’s front porch.  That’s when I realize that, by its very existence, Venice proved that anything was possible.

It is said that Venice is slowly sinking.  That Venice has a reputation as being a dying city would probably have come to a surprise to the drunk Americans who were just looking for a girl from Texas that summer.  And yet, Venice has always been associated with death.  Just consider Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and the subsequent film adaptation from Luchino Visconti.  Consider the controversial Giallo in Venice and Don’t Look Now.

Venice is a city that is beautiful at day and ominous and menacing at night.  That’s certainly something that’s captured in Alone in Venice.

Made for an obviously low-budget but featuring some stunning shots of its title city, Alone In Venice tells the story of Saul Larson (Apollo Luce), a young actor who has spent the last year in Venice.  He says that he was told to stay in the city by a Chinese film director who is in love with him.  He says that he’s waiting for her to come out to Venice to join him.  At one point, he says that she has even arranged for him to be classified as a permanent resident of the city so that he doesn’t have to worry about his visa expiring.  How she did that is never really explained, though its implied that, while she’s arranged for him to stay in Venice forever, she’s also trapped him there.  He can live in Venice but he can’t leave it.

A friend from America (played by Lisa Jacqueline Starrett) visits him and tells him that she thinks that he’s being used.  She points out that he’s living in a crummy apartment that doesn’t even have a good view and that the director is 1) married and 2) hasn’t contacted him in months.  A man named Tommaso (Luca Rosini) invites Saul back to his place and it’s implied that the two have a brief affair, though Saul continues to obsess  over the director and her love of orchids.  When the prostitute who lives down the hall offers herself to Saul for free, Saul appears to have a panic attack.  Saul insists that the director exists and that she will be coming for him in just a few days.

The majority of the film is made up of scenes of Saul walking around and sometimes running through Venice.  The city is the main attraction here.  At day, the city is vibrant and full of life.  At night, the city is full of shadows and a frightening clown makes an appearance.  There’s more than few shots that owe a debt to Don’t Look Now and its sequences of Donald Sutherland chasing after the figure in the red raincoat.

What does it all mean?  The film largely leaves that up to the viewer.  Whether or not the film works will depend on how much tolerance the viewer has for open-ended storytelling and unanswered questions.  (As you may have guessed, neither one is particularly an issue for me.)  Saul is committed to believing that his director is coming for him and occasionally, there’s something a bit disturbing about his obsession with her.  Throughout the film, he’s given plenty of opportunities to move on, whether it’s returning to America with his friend or pursuing a new relationship.  Instead, he chooses again and again to be alone in Venice.