Ricordati di me

"Remember my Name", directed by Gabriele Muccino, kept reminding this viewer about his previous film, "The Last Kiss", because in both, the main characters at the center of each story are named Carlo and Giulia. Could this 2003 has anything to do with the other one? Or was it just a coincidence? We don't get any actual fact to tie both movies together, but in a way, the two movies deal with an inner crisis that the two Carlos must face and come to terms with.

This new film has a frenetic pace in the first hour. It seems as though Giulia and Carlo's relationship is strained, despite the somehow normal family life they lead. This is a film that asks a lot from its viewers, as they try to keep pace with the quick tempo Mr. Muccino gives the picture.

It's clear to see that things aren't exactly the best between husband and wife. Carlo is at a point in his life where he can't deal with a job he doesn't care about and Giulia wants to go back to an acting career that didn't materialize when she married Carlo. Valentina, the young daughter, wants to pursue a career in television where beauty and a fast friends view her as a desired commodity. Paolo, the son, is an uncool youth who wants to belong in a world he is not cut out for.

When the gorgeous Alissia enters the picture, Carlo can't resist seeing her again; they have been lovers before, but have lost track of each other in the succeeding years. Their relationship has a negative effect on both households, as Alissia is by now married, and Carlo loses his head when he decides to quit his job and renew his relationship with Alissia. When Carlo suffers a freak accident that sends him to the hospital for a long time, Giulia and the children rally to support him. In fact, this should be something to change Carlo's attitude in forgetting Alissia, but is it? We realize the accident and his gratitude to his wife and kids will be questioned again when we see him in the final moments of the film in the supermarket where he sees Alissia with her two young children as they make last minute Christmas preparations.

Fabrizio Bentivoglio makes us care for the complex Carlo, a man whose passion has been dormant for a long time. Laura Morante, plays Giulia, the woman who has to make choices and wants to keep everyone together. Monica Belucci is seen as Alissia, the one that never stopped loving Carlo.

The movie has a great look thanks to the camera work of Marcello Montarsi. The music by Paolo Buonvino is also an asset in the film. Gabriele Muccino, with this new movie proves to be an important voice in the Italian cinema today and we await for his new film with interest.

I watched "Ricordati di me" and it felt like a polite conversation that avoids self criticism and only accepts one's personal dreams and ambitions. A conversation that accomplishes nothing since the subconscious is too scared to embark on the dreams because there is no safety net.

'Remember Me, My Love,' as it is known in North America, is a great film that reveals the superficial mask of the family unit. It is the story of a family and its progressive loss of balance between the self and the public sphere of conventional happiness. This film begins beautifully with the personal woes of the family members and the audience can sense the inevitable tipping of the cauldron.

The crossroads for most of the characters is based upon their personal potential and their own self-interests versus the ones created by their environments. For Carlo Ristuccia (played wonderfully by Fabrizio Bentivoglio), Giulia (another great performance by Laura Morante) and Alessia (played by the very talented Monica Belucci) the question at hand is based upon their waning existence. They all seem to feel lost and monotone while they struggle to feel the youthful sensation of bliss and love. The opening sequence is perfectly written and shot to portray the Ristuccias one dimensional life. The screenplay, subtle in its work, progressively displays the inevitable choices to be made by the members of the Ristuccia family.

However, as the characters embark on their selfish adventures, they digress from their intentions and they seem to blindly be repeating their mistakes. Giulia attempts to reconcile her acting career yet fails to see the theme of the play as a reflection of her own state. Carlo, failing to write the last chapter of his novel, never completes his work because he is afraid to risk and lose. He, along with the rest of his family, tries to balance between the want and the need. A problem that is never realized - even in the end.

"Remember Me, My Love" is a film that could have benefited from some slight editing, especially concerning Valentina's storyline, yet the end product leaves you feeling like the characters - a false sense of hope but a bigger sense of loss. This film strikes a reminiscent chord for its audience because it deals with loss - the loss of dreams, the loss of love - and its battle with throwing in the towel. None of the characters experience true happiness however they've convinced themselves at times. The first and final shot sum up the film beautifully as it questions the choices made by each of the man characters. It's all a facade, so enjoy the show.

Yesterday I saw this excellent movie, and it is still lingering in my brain and my soul.

I merely liked, not loved, Gabriele Muccino's smash Italian hit L'Ultimo Bacio when I saw it, since its depiction of thirtysomething doubts and fears left a sort of slightly fake aftertaste in my mouth. Plus, it waned out of my mind in a couple of hours, even though I had enjoyed while I was in the theatre.

Ricordati Di Me is a very, very different deal. It's a delicate, multi-faceted, true and touching punch in your stomach.

Well written and well played - especially by the extremely skillful and absolutely charming Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who's one of Italy's most gifted thesps as well as the longtime boyfriend of Rain Man's Valeria Golino (here you see him pouring his heart out onscreen with painful, searing directness) - the movie brings you into the home of a dysfunctional Italian family not dissimilar from so many dysfunctional Italian families.

Meet them: there is the melancholic, romantic, slightly frustrated husband Carlo (played by Bentivoglio), who's an obscure white-collar worker who once wanted to be a writer and keeps a sensitivity that leaves him totally exposed to raw emotions and to the eventual unfair blow of fate, all of this while keeping as well a still-unfinished novel in one of his drawers; then there is his VERY frustrated teacher wife (played by the ever-classy Laura Morante), who once wanted to be a stage actress. They've got two teenage kids, one of them a vain and egotistical 18-year-old daughter, keen on only one thing, i.e. becoming a TV starlet (played by stunning newcomer Nicoletta Romanoff), and the other one a vaguely leftish, pot-smoking daydreamer senior high schooler son (played by the director's brother).

Nothing new or revolutionary here, be sure of that, but the whole tale elaborated by Gabriele Muccino about the emotional disintegration of this apparently average family is narrated with passion and participation, both by its writer-director and by the actors.

The foursome meet enormous difficulties in communicating with each other - not only the parents with their children do, but also each of them with any other one, and egotism and indifference run rampant, especially in the veins of Valentina, the young daughter, who's a truly upsetting spectacle to watch, what with her relentless pursuing of a tinsel world, a world made of garish make-up, TV studios and squalid sex relationships with one or the other TV beefcake idol, since this girl, while still looking very innocent on the outside, would do anything to be cast in some cheesy TV show as one of the decorative babes who strut and grind in the background.

So, when you see Carlo, the husband, falling again - after many years - for married and unsatisfied mother of two Alessia (the ever-stunning Monica Bellucci, here way more expressive and intense than usual), an old flame of his youth, you just cannot think, not even for a second, of him as a middle-aged philanderer, or of Alessia as your typical homewrecker. The rekindling of their love is something so pure, so tender, so NEEDED by both these characters, that you can't help rooting for them - and be heartbroken when things just become spinning in a totally unpredicted direction, which I don't want to spoil for you.

I also truly appreciated the open ending, which leaves the audience enough room to imagine whatever they like for the future life of these characters, who've just been, anyway, through a journey able to break - once and for all - the walls of hypochrisy that previously surrounded them.

Go and see this movie, you won't regret it.

The only way this soap opera turned into a feature film could have redeemed itself would have been with a "Godfather"-like ending: all of the offending parties (and God knows this family was filled with nothing but 'tipi antipatici') would be liquidated at the very end, as just retribution for their total 'antipatia'. This movie has not a single character in it who is likable, which, I suppose, makes for an interesting cinematographic exercise: you'd like to get up and leave these horrible people to themselves and the screen, but you can't bring yourself to do it because you're hoping that the director will obliterate them for you at some point in the film.

This movie is hard to absorb, partly because the dialogue is difficult in translation and partly because of the fading and mixing of scenes that introduce the 4 character stories within. Four people in a family so plausibly like middle class families everywhere, except here in Italy the members are more likely to be beautiful, handsome, suave, and worth staring at for some feature or another. Muccino shows us that the happiness we work for within a family is easily thrown away (no wonder there is so much divorce), but that the common need to have one place where we think we can be recognized and loved for who we are can bind even the most dysfunctional family unit. Each character here is struggling with ego. Carlo (the handsome Fabrizio Bentivoglio whose hair belongs on marble statues) wants romantic love and an escape from boredom of his job and family -- he ought to have had something different, but he doesn't, and honestly he is the middle of middle class personified -- a salesman working on number 8 sale. Guilia (Larua Morante -- among the most beautiful of Italian actresses currently) is hopelessly insecure but pictures herself as a great stage actress, which is might possibly be -- if it really was her obsession -- the real obsession being to retain the normality of her marriage facade. Valentina (Nicoletta Romanoff) is the a self absorbed teen age bod beautiful with the hips and hair of her generation -- so anxious for a bit role in a dreadful television programme to recognize her beauty. And finally Paolo (A Muccino relative surely) desperate for recognition of his specialness. All want recognition for the specialness and at the same time the security of the familiar. Every moment of this movie shows the tension between the desire for a self-perceived "fame" or "happiness" based on selfishness and the pull that conventional family love provides. These characters recognize true happiness when the routine is threatened and Fabrizio faces possible paraplegia. The other three cannot (although they do) contemplate anything but return to the beginning. Scene after scene develops the characters -- and portrays their dilemma of self versus family -- something many of us continually face when lucky enough to have a unit that is at the same time crushing of self and supportive of "love". The ending is perfect -- smile, Fabrizio-- One was left knowing that nothing had really changed for this family or the individuals involved although 3 of them appeared to get what they wanted -- and even Fabrizio got his "break" from routine. Maybe he was the unluckiest and had to smile the hardest as he built his selfish love on a dream that had no apparent fulfillment (NO BRIEF ENCOUNTER THIS -- just a desire for a Brief Encounter). I imagine this movie was very disappointing to many -- it was a treat to one who scoured the video store for something different and found a depiction of every day life that was hopeful and helpless and maybe the description of a happiness that is never fully satisfactory but we are required in the end to accept -- and to live without ever being fully aware.