APPOINTMENT WITH IL DUCE

However meandering, the "Road to Wellville" eventually leads to Mussolini's Rome in this offbeat debut, a spaghetti spinoff of a rags-to-riches Horatio Alger tale. At age nine, Beppe Arpino is a dreamy, taciturn insomniac, the eldest of three siblings raised in a remote Italian village by a hysterical widow whose husband was stabbed to death shortly after arriving in America. Befriended by Father Vincenzo, a slightly dotty priest, Beppe becomes something of an accidental cellist virtuoso. A chipped molar and a chance encounter with an itinerant tooth extractor lead the inquisitive Beppe to a fascination with teeth. After the old priest dies, the erstwhile cellist eventually finds his way to Naples to study dentistry and is taken under the tutelage of Dr. Puzo, a quixotic and jaded dental pedagogue. Metamorphosed into a sort of Neapolitan Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Dr. Puzo's passion is now focused more upon a holistic fanaticism with fitness and wellness than with filling teeth. Benefiting from Puzo's rigorous discipline, Beppe rescues the son of a wealthy aristocrat beset by thugs; fascinated by the victim's sister's perfect teeth, he falls in love with her and they become engaged. The naïve Puzo becomes the unwitting pawn of the Fascist Mussolini and exacts a deathbed promise that Beppe will deliver his fitness plan for Il Duce's ironfisted new order. Despite the risk of losing his true love, Beppe, now a successful dentist, goes to Rome to keep his appointment with destiny. Shadowed vaguely by the rise of Mussolini, this whimsical if ungainly tale is not without a certain charm, but it fails to shade its hodgepodge of characters and plot lines with humor or ideological nuance. (June)