It’s obvious what the ending of The Love Scam will be ten minutes after pressing play. Depending on who you are and what you’re looking for, this is either an upside or a downside. A rom-com this predictable that isn’t interested in shaking up the structural status quo probably owes its audience a happy ending, and that’s exactly what’s provided here to an almost comical degree. Vito and Marina end up together. Vito gets sole custody of Napoleon. The brothers’ building is saved. Marina transitions to a more fulfilling career. What more can you want?
Director Umberto Riccioni Carteni is obviously banking on these low expectations. What begins as a funny but mildly creepy premise becomes a vehicle for the usual enemies-to-lovers arc, backdropped by a bit of upstairs/downstairs anticapitalism messaging for good measure. I said in my review that this is what makes The Love Scam a disappointment, but it’s my job to complain about these things. For a certain viewer, it could be just what the doctor ordered.
Stalk Her Until You Make It
A particular point of contention in the premise of The Love Scam is the fact that it hinges ever-so-slightly on stalking being depicted as a romantic overture. The idea behind this is that Vito and Antone are brothers who are set to lose their family home thanks to a gentrification project. Antone is in debt to the De Leonardi company to the tune of fifty grand, and since Vito is a struggling single father who can’t hold down a job and Antone is a layabout whose get-rich-quick schemes saddled them with the debt in the first place, there’s no way for the brothers to get the money other than to charm De Leonardi’s daughter, Marina, into giving them a charitable donation to a made-up non-profit organization.
Getting Marina on side, though, requires getting her to fall for Vito, which means analyzing her stolen phone for information about her interests, personal life, and patterns, and then manipulating her into a relationship. Is this highly questionable? Yeah, sure, especially when it ends up being successful and Marina falls head-over-heels for Vito. But is it that egregious? I’m not so sure.
Stalking has been used as an easy and unsavory trope in films and TV for years, and it often yields positive results, so you can see how that’s a pretty dangerous message to be putting out there. But Vito’s stalking is so overtly slapstick that it’s difficult to take especially seriously. Marina isn’t threatened or frightened by him, and she calls out his creepy behavior to his face. But… she does fall for him regardless. So, I’d say it’s lamentable, but not a deal-breaker in this instance (unless you’re a lot touchier about such things than I am, obviously, which is your right.)
Best Kept Secret
Most of The Love Scam revolves around the burgeoning relationship between Vito and Marina, with the reality that she’s going to inevitably find out what he’s up to building some tension. And this is precisely what happens.
Of course, Marina makes the discovery – the truth is revealed to her by her awful partner, Federico – just as Vito has decided that what he’s doing is wrong, and he can’t in good conscience accept the money that Marina has offered him. So you just know they’re going to put their differences aside by the end. But that’s the point of the movie, folks. You just have to roll with it.
Baby Napoleon in The Love Scam | Image via Netflix
Marina’s Change of Heart
You can tell Marina is still on-side because she doesn’t go running back to Federico. Instead, she’s appalled by what he has done, which is essentially finesse the abandonment of the apartment building by deliberately causing problems in it – rat infestations, plumbing issues, the whole nine. Since Vito and Antone were adamant about not moving out even after all this, Federico’s only recourse was entrapping Antone in the scam that racked up his substantial debt.
Looping back to the stalking thing for a moment, this can certainly be read as the movie justifying Vito’s actions. I can’t quibble with that reading. And I suppose it’s something that Marina herself would have to ponder in a better film with a better script since her experiences with Vito showed her how she could live a happier life and pursue her passions more than chasing profit and success like Federico. As written here, it feels a little too easy. But no matter.
The most interesting aspect of The Love Scam’s ending is that even before their reconciliation, Marina works with Vito and Antone to expose Federico. Since Marina’s father, Vittorio, wasn’t in on the scam, he prevents the demolition of the apartment building and abandons the construction project. But I never bought for a second that Marina and Vito really hated each other and would simply move on with their lives after this. And nor should you.
Happily Ever After
It’s through Antone’s intervention – in a neat inversion of the catalyzing incident, he steals his brother’s phone and plants it on Marina, whereas at the beginning of the movie he had stolen Marina’s phone – that Marina realizes Vito had no intention of taking the money she had volunteered to give him. Even if his intentions might not have been pure, to begin with, whatever connection they came to share during the process was genuine.
So, yes, Vito and Marina end up together at the end of The Love Scam. Was there ever any doubt? What’s more is that Vito, Antone, and Marina open a restaurant together, each bringing some kind of value to the business. Marina is, obviously, the head chef.
And in another nice twist from earlier, Antone receives another letter that he refuses to open, suspecting it’s a fine. But having learned his lesson, Vito forces him to open it and learns that thanks to his newly stable business endeavor, he has been granted full custody of Napoleon. Antone might not quite have put his conman ways completely behind him, but he’s certainly on his way.
