Mon frère est fils unique

MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD ('Mio fratello è figlio unico') is a title that may confuse the casual movie viewer, but it is an apt summation of the rigorous story that this excellent Italian film by Danielle Luchetti (adapted from a novel by Antonio Pennacchi) represents - the coming of age of two brothers in the confusing and turbulent 1960's and 1970's in Italy. While the film deals with the myriad political factions that disrupted life especially among the students of that era, the main focus of the story is the indomitable brotherly love that bonds the two main characters.

Accio Benano (Vittorrio Emanuele Popizo) as a child is a mischief maker who has entered seminary to become a priest, but his innate search for truth and meaning soon finds him returning home to his little family in a Mussolini-fabricated town called Latina, a village built on promises of communal well-being (a housing project was built but the poor villagers are refused access to it), but languishes in the poverty of lost hopes and deflated spirits. Accio's father, mother, younger sister and older brother Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) are making ends meet, but are frustrated with the political oppression of the working class. Time passes and the older Accio (Elio Germano) comes under the influence of Mussolini's 'idealism' with the tutelage of his older friend Mario (Luca Zingaretti) and embraces Fascism while Manrico has aligned with the communists, and it is this dichotomy of belief that sets Accio apart from his brother as well as his family who are communist sympathizers. Accio's personality places him in harms way with the law, with women (he has longings for the women in both Mario's and Manrico's lives), and ultimately with turns of events that threaten to pit brother against brother. The resolution of these conflicts makes for a fascinating study of familial ties, brotherly love, and a keenly observed sociopolitical history of Italy that is as enlightening as it is entertaining.

While Germano and Scamarcio are the obvious stars of this well acted film, the supporting cast (including such fine actors as Angela Finocchiaro, Massimo Popolizio, Alba Rohrwacher, Anna Bonaiuto, and Diane Fleri) is uniformly strong. This epic film demands full attention to the script (Italian with English subtitles) to follow the various political differences, but the tenor of the film is one of the excitement and concomitant love of two brothers coming of age in the best Italian style! It is a joy to watch and a lesson in history about which we should all be aware. Grady Harp

'My Brother is an Only Child' tells the story of two red-blooded siblings as they take their first steps into political and sexual adulthood in the Italy of the 1960s. It's an intriguing premise, but for me, it didn't quite come together. Specifically, the fascism and communism that its protagonists pursue seem obviously unappealing: the film fails to convey how anyone could follow such causes except out of immaturity, though there are some funny moments (the new leftist lyrics to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the most obvious of them). At the end of the film, a housing scandal is exposed, but the film doesn't really explain how the scam had worked: the story would make sense if the houses in question hadn't actually been built, but in fact they have been, and one senses that the writer has resolved a happy ending without worrying too much about the details. What's nice about this film is its portrait of a place and a time, and the very believable love-hate relationship between the brothers; but if you weren't there yourself, perhaps its inevitable that you find yourself looking in from the outside.

The first 30 minutes or so made me hope for the best. Elio Germano is an actor with an extraordinary power to grab his audience and make us care, plus, the film seemed to move away from the (very good) book it is based on and go for the most engaging comedic aspects of the story. I knew it was too good to be true. Shortly after the film falls in a series of common places robbing us from the possibility to be surprised, engaged or even care. I wonder why it is that we - in Italy I mean - feel the need to visit the past though the same identical paths. To tell you the truth, I'm sick and tired of it. Can we tell stories that live out of its own strength. Politics, intellectual reflections without any, real, base on reality. We are known for protesting at a bar table, maybe go to a demonstration but at the end of the day we are going to do what we're told. Honestly or dishonestly. Could it be that, this relentless film revisions, is a tacit way to justify the fact that we've been so ineffectual in real life. We've been through everything and more but nothing has really changed. We're better identified by the Alberto Sordi characters like the one in "La Grande Guerra" by the great Mario Monicelli. My question is: If I, as an Italian, couldn't care less about the political mismatch of two Italian brothers, imagine the rest of the world. How confusing and ultimately annoying way to tell a story. There was a sort of uproar today, knowing that this film had not been selected for the official selection at the Cannes Film Fest. Hey, come on, think again. Why should it be? There is absolutely nothing new in it. Nothing! Riccardo Scamarcio continues to sleep walk through his film roles. He is beautiful but not nearly as magnetic as Elio Germano. I hope we'll wake up soon and realize that we won't change the past by revisiting it. That we are who we are and should look ahead to see what happens.

There's this much to be said for this movie from the ranks of Italy's new young directors and actors: The quality of the acting was at least one notch above the usual fare, which almost never transcends the clichéd facial expressions and intonations we expect to find in TV dramas and sit-coms. This new generation of actors and directors was raised on US television imports ("telefilms") and Latin-American soaps, and it definitely shows in the uninspired and uninspiring quality of their work. And one gets the impression that 90% of them come from Parioli, a very well-to-do neighborhood of Rome, that would be the rough equivalent of coming from Santa Monica, Lake Forest IL, or Westport Conn—all those perfectly groomed faces coming from families of the Italian haute bourgeoisie with unlimited funds to advance their children's "acting career." If it weren't for Elio Germano as Accio (as well as Luca Zingaretti as Accio's fascist mentor and Anna Bonaiuto as his wife), this movie would probably fall into the same category of banalized film-making with all the rest.

But Germano's performance is not enough to salvage a film that fails to rise above a rating of "mediocrity +". Certainly it was an interesting idea to situate the action in Latina, a city built from scratch by Mussolini's fascist regime after it had drained the surrounding swamp land (the "bonifica" that was one of Fascism's highly touted achievements). All of the city's architecture was inspired by fascist "monumental" design.

Regrettably, Luchetti has done little of interest to exploit this setting for his family drama other than to bring up the same old cliché of opposing extremisms (the thuggery of the neo-fascist right vs. the banditry and targeted terrorism of the extra-parliamentary left). And the drama of the conflict between these two extremisms is used altogether too much to drive the plot forward. Some Italian commentators disliked this film because it seemed to go over the same old ground in the same old way—when it was time, presumably, to move on to new subjects. But the problem was not that it rehashed Italian history—the problem was the "hash." Bellocchio, after all, did a wonderful job of re-interpreting to Italians the experience of the Red Brigades in his "Buongiorno,Notte".

But here the audience is simply given a choice between fascist hooliganism and a lunatic left, when actually the situation in Italy in the 60s and 70s was much more complicated and nuanced. Millions of Italians belonged to parties and movements that were seriously committed to a progressive transformation of Italy that did not involve knee-cappings and assassinations. And so Luchetti ends up confirming (perhaps despite himself) the American/Berlusconiano vision of the world: "Forget about ideology—it's all about individual freedom and authenticity in your personal relationships." And finally we can see the effects of Berlusconi's TV stations and their ilk also in the movie's script. After 20, I stopped counting how many times the characters said, "Ma Che Cazzo Dici?"("What the f#%k are you saying?"). It is a measure of the moronization of the Italian public under the sway of Berlusconi and Berlusconian media that the scriptwriters think that they can get a laugh out of an Italian audience with this phrase each and every time it is said—and sadly they're probably right.

I rushed to see this movie, with Elio Germano, perhaps the best Italian actor of his generation, and Riccardo Scamarcio, the heartthrob of the moment. I got upset about the rejection from the snobbish Cannes Festival and I wanted to see the film by myself. Now, after having seen it, unfortunately, I have to agree with the Cannes decision. The film is a tired rehash of other books/films/TV done indifferently and boringly with two saving graces: Elio Germano's and Angela Finocchiaro's performances. The rest is, quite frankly, unendurable. The film felt long, long, long and I got more and more impatient and eventually angry with the whole thing. The Italian cinema that once was a power force of inspiring themes and ideas seems to have arrived to a total dead stop. The artists, I feel, with something new to say, like Libero Di Rienzo - have you seen his "Sangue" with Elio Germano as well? No, I bet you haven't. It was released in secrecy and for my money, his movie had something new to say in a totally new exciting way. I fear we, in Italy, can't move forward because we're trapped in some king of structure that it's terrified of new ideas. As a consequence we have films like this one. A throw back to the past and not in a nice way. Cannes? Are you nuts?