Love & Gelato

Twenty-something Hadley Emerson, a promising photographer, immediately feels how Florence stirs her emotions, her heart, and her creativity. She feels alive, saying, “I’ve never been anyplace that I want to capture so much” (136). Years later, her daughter undergoes a similar experience when she first visits the city’s Medieval Ponte Vecchio, saying, “It gave me a solemn, awestruck kind of feeling. Like going to a church. Only I wanted to stay here for the whole rest of my life” (160). Before Lina falls in love with Ren, she falls in love with Italy.

Love & Gelato taps into a deep cultural association between Italy and romance. Since the sweeping romantic tragedy of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Italy has been conceived within the cultural imagination as a magical land of romance and passion, embodying the concept of la dolce vita (or the good life), a term that iconic Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini popularized in one of his many quirky fantasy-romances set in the environs of Rome. With its distinct Old-World charms—its cities, towns, and seaside villages preserve the look and feel of both the Medieval and Renaissance eras—Italy has become a splendid escape for lovers young and old, a place to affirm new love or to rekindle its fires. In addition, Italy is associated with sensual delights, known for rich and indulgent foods served during luxuriously long meals, as well as for cellars full of wines grown in the local vineyards that line the countryside’s rolling hills. The musical rhythms of the language itself, as generations of opera composers and aficionados would testify, delight the ear with a rich, sonic weave of languid vowels and soft, rolling consonants. The country’s cutting-edge fashion and celebration of art in its architecture, cathedrals, and the statuary in its public squares all give the country a reputation for passionate creativity.

Given this cultural context, Italy has provided backdrop for countless contemporary movies that have used Italy to create an ambience of magic, love, and possibility—among the more widely known are the 1953 Audrey Hepburn vehicle Roman Holiday (which Lina and Howard watch together); A Room With a View (1985), based on the novel by E. M. Forster; Il Postino (1994); Under the Tuscan Sun (2003); Eat Pray Love (2010); and Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love (2012). Italy also maintains its powerful aura of love and passion in best-selling contemporary romance novels (in addition to Jenna Evans Welch’s “Love & Gelato”), including the novels of T. A. Williams, Ann Fortier, Samantha Tonge, and Leonie Mack.