Il più bel giorno della mia vita

As you probably know it is a story of a group of brothers and their mother, it talks about different view of relationship, sex and so on. It has many points, the story goes on fluently, the atmosphere is cured, actors works really good, they export very well emotions and the entire movie as well. The only problem I found is quite basic: it is a normal, classical Italian movie! I'm not talking about Fellini & co.'s movies, but the last decade of movies from my country. They tell us the story of reletionship, familiar problem, real emotions and more. OK, sometimes it is not so bad, like this one indeed, but it seems every time the sequel of a previous movie of this typology. DADIE

The most beautiful day of my life is a great concert of the most distinguished acting I have seen in a long time.

The Italian family at its best: meeting every Sunday for a lunch at the house of the conservative and traditionalistic grandma. And while on the outside everybody is keeping their face, the relationships within and between the family members have their classic taboos which cannot be touched: the brother's homosexuality, the sister's affair, etc. The longing for love is so eminent, it almost scares. And while we have to wait for the catharsis to arrive, we learn that there is no right or wrong about love. And that the individual perspective about love is just the one there is... no absolute truths, no demons of the known... just the personal stories and their roots.

The director did a great job with unusual camera positions. They show the hidden, the undiscovered... Thanks!

This really poetic film tells the story of an italian family. It is the story of a grandmother, Irene, her two daughters, Rita and Sara and her son, Claudio. Sara is a woman who is not able to trust of any man and she is always worry for her son. Rita, who has two daughters, is living the end of her marriage and is in love with a veterinary surgeon. Claudio is a gay and he doesn't try to manage this fact in a good way. At the beginning the relationship inside this family are very formal, everyone tries to hide his deep feelings but, little by little, the impossibility to live a daily life behind a mask determines a change in the behaviour of all protagonists. However this change is not without suffering. Irene herself, who at a first glance seems to be a woman without uncertainty and always tried to give serenity to all his family, suddendly realizes that her life was full of masks too and that suffering and uncertainty are elements of every life.

A pity this film starred several major Italian actors and actresses, from Virna Lisi to Margherita Buy, and even today's seemingly brightest stars on the Italian movie scene, Luigi Lo Cascio and Sandra Ceccarelli. The problem with this piece of work is not the issues it discusses, these being quite simply some of the brightest and darkest sides of life. It is the fact that pretty much everything could have been done better here - the plot, the photography, the acting, the ending - none of which are anywhere near the level of "Luce dei miei occhi", a previous work (by another director) also starring Lo Cascio and Ceccarelli. The entrance of one manifestly dubbed foreign actor contributes in making the film more wobbly and less believable. But most of all, the way Ricky Tognazzi steps in, near the end of the story, exposes a major plot hole. After that final faux pas, the film is hardly salvageable.

I agree with most of the critics above. More yet, I was shocked by the presentation of the love scenes with the homosexual couple.

Why? because while they --the director, the producers?-- didn't have any compulsion whatsoever in presenting the different heterosexual couples in the most passionate embraces including nudity and super close-ups of French kissing and all sorts of nude contortions in bed, completely unnecessary in their length and in the story, when the moment came to show the same experiences with the homosexual couple, they only dare to go as far as an excruciatingly painful hug, almost among scholarly giggles, with two very nervous actors.

So, in reality, the makers of this film found homosexuality to be UNNATURAL, as one of the characters says in some scene.

What a difference with the Spanish cinema!!

I remember being at the projection of an Almodovar film in an Italian cinema in Rome, and being completely amazed at the total lack of reaction from the Italian audience, they were afraid to have a reaction!! when in Spain people would fall down from their seats laughing at all the risquè situations and fabulous Almodovar wit and flair.

Obviously in Italy there are dark forces in its history that impedes the free manifestation of some very normal and natural emotions.

Pity.

I must add that I was quite surprised to find that this same comment of mine was censured by another correspondent and I felt obliged to rewrite it.

It's very bad and dangerous when we cannot be allowed by the narrow-mindedness of others to express our opinions about certain matters (Homosexuality and the catholic church in this case).

What happened to the Freedom of Speech?

I don't know if that censor will approve of the changes I was forced to make in this review, and I hope he won't ever receive himself the same treatment to his ideas, because that intolerance shows a very sad state of bigotry and dark ignorance.

* * *

2012.

Several years have gone by since this film was made and I wrote a review (twice censured) to which now I'm adding this appendix due to the way the world is drastically changing its view about homosexuality.

Since 2002 several countries have made same sex marriage legal by law and in the case of Argentina in particular it includes adoption and this law covers the whole country.

Furthermore, there is a new law here that allows officially the change of sex without medical intervention and without eyewitnesses just by going to a registry office and changing one's name from the actual sex to the opposite one. Also tourist gay couples from other countries can be married within two hours in any registry office.

And to think that I was forced by an objector to my first comment that censured my review to write it twice! I wonder what that objector may be thinking about how the world is changing...