Seduction through centuries The latin lover, talent and technique by Oriana Maerini
	From Rudy Valentino to Raoul Bova "When Sharon Stone left Rome she also let behind a 24 year-old italian actor named Raul Bova" This is what "Women Wear Daily" wrote about her a few years ago. Has the fascination of latin lover struck again? Julia Roberts has been another victim. The tabloid have reported she had a relationship with one of her italian body guards. Recently Naomi Campbell is fallen in love with an italian manager. Has the supremacy of italian seduction risen once more? The fashion industry confoirms that the myth of the Latin lover exists and has persisted over the years, and this year in Florence for the "Pitto Uomo" exhibition an exhibition and book were dedicated to the figure of the Latin lover. Despite his illustrious predecessors, (Juppiter, Don Giovanni, Casanova) the Latin lover, at least in his most diffused meaning, is a product of the cultural market of a relatively modern epoch. Rudolph Valentino's films inaugurated the cult of the almost godlike Italian seducer and that good- looking, sensitive Italian immigrant who danced the tango offered the pretext for the cultural industry to realize a product for widespread consuption. The sweetness of Rudolph Rodolfo Guglielmi was an of the the many immigrants who went to America to find his fortune. He was an exotic object of desire, full of a certain fascination which was different from that of the Anglo-Saxon culture. He was striking because of his special gifts in areas generally attributed to the feminine sphere; things like sweetness, strong passivity, and his willingness to please. By entrusting to a foreigner this role which deviated from the classic adventurer, Hollywood distanced the American spectator from the suspicion of watching something that could touch them directly. The latin lover was sufficiently exotic to accomplish this feat, and in the meantime was not someone who was too far away from the experiences of daily life. And his death, Hollywood tried in vain to find another Valentino (even by launching a contest in Italy). Rudy's shadow was too great, he remained unique, untochable. This is how the myth of the italian lover was born. The romantic hero Before the huge success of Valentino's film, no one found Italians sexy. After him, Italian began to believe to be great lovers and strove to demostrate this to the whole world. From the 1950s and on, the Latin Lover, like Rossno Brazzi, was the only expression of mass Italian Culture which integrated into pop culture, the only authentic success of the Made in Italy creativity wghich was not based on the cost differential of working labor. Perhaps the true nature of the Latin Lover was advertising; to help sell. Meeting an Italian "pappagallo" (one who personifies this concept) is part of the surprise expected the moment one busy a ticket for Italy. Just thirty years ago, this Latin lover was not ther only example of the most truthful standard bearer of Mediterranean masculinity for national tourist-seaside sales figures, but rose to a hero status of a famous tradition of romantic sentimentalism with a "view". But who is the Latin lover? What distinguishes him from international playboys, from the women chasers of Boston or Stockholm? What is not criteria are the quantity, with realtive lies, about cubiclinear centimeters of force or skill, nor the anxienty of keeping up-to-date score, or money, or shirts open at the chest, pendants or long-lasting tans. What distinguisheshim from other men who are lucky with women is rather the passionate intensity or "Mediterranean heat" in which it mixes with hyperactive sexuality. There is also a marked seductive fantasy, an elaborated strategy of glances and an immediacy of suggestion which moves person he is talking to and crowds out the competition. There is no lack of courtesy in his manners with a personal elegance and developped esthetic sense. Whatr is the state of the Latin lover? A rediscovered tradition By now he is a residual figure, a species on the road to extinction like the panda, the Arctic whale, and the Bengal tiger. He has no Word Wildlife Fund to protect him, and he is surrounded by slandereres: feminists, candid souls, progresive intellectuals, and repentant ex-male chauvinists. In spite of them, everyone would like to see a return to the top for the Latin lover as a happy occasion for future amorous relations between men and women. A promise tinged with nostalgia fort the 60s that seems newer, happier and more colorful today. So it does not seem to be the case that fashion turns to the look of those years. Turning inside to cinsider love as a false seception: the sweet deception everyone dreams about, consciously followed and accepted by men and women like a game or toy theater of roles to undress and dress for pleasure.