O Mais Belo Dia da Minha Vida

I just finished watching this movie on TV and I must say I enjoyed it. Unlike some commentators here, I found it well acted, filmed and decently written. I am Italian and I liked the dialogues and the way in which they draw the identity and psychology of each character. They are dry and realistic. Silence and inability to fully talk are presented as important as they are in real life and, it seems to me, in many family dynamics. And for being a movie produced by RAI, of course it has some obvious auto-limitations in the way in which certain themes are represented – like homosexuality and the absence of a scene of sexual intercourse or even a kiss between two males – but still it does a decent job in rendering passions, emotions and the way in which sexuality shapes human relationship and understanding. So, not a masterpiece, but a good product.

The problem with some other reviews here has to do with the conception of cinema that some have and the ramifications that this has on the way they judge a movie. For many it seems that a film should necessarily be a piece of militant advocacy for the cause they see as fundamental. So any creation should stand for something: war criticism, homosexuality, fight against segregation, etc. And if the cause happens to be a centerpiece of today's political correctness, then the movie should scream that for one hundred minutes in the ears of the viewers. Well, this movie is not of that kind and does not want to say much about homosexuality. It tries to see human relations with eyes of a ten year old girl, not with the over-pouring judgment of, say, Almodovar. It takes some ability to be light, and Ms. Comencini has it.

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

Although Il più bel giorno della mia vita is again a story from Italy about the breakdown of traditional family structure, the movie goes way beyond this theme. If you see this only as being on the first (kind of superior soap) level you will miss a lot. It is a movie that makes us viewers work hard. It is well constructed and uses three cinematic devices to get its message across.

First, there is heavy use of symbolism. The two most important are the dogs standing for loyalty and the cigarettes referring to desire and passion. When true love sets in the dog breaks something on the table. There's the whole stop-smoking club, the two members we know do not only stop quitting, they also have an affair. A boat figures as the obvious symbol. The church is used as a reference for traditional values, here mainly present in the art direction (e.g. church buildings and statues) but also in the young girl up for communion who is the center of the whole story. This movie is so dense that you have to watch it again to get every relation of the symbols in relation to the interaction of the characters.

Then there is the use of the 'fast character introduction'. The many characters are rapidly sketched in the beginning and all story lines are only touched upon, and because there are so many characters we need time and attention to connect the dots.

Once we are familiar with the characters and their connections and context, we jump two months ahead. So we do again have to pay attention to pick up on everything. There's other clever use of time (to show past and present in one scene by projecting images at the background, or by using fantasies of past and present).

There are roughly three parts: the setup of all relations, then the start of all love relations that change the landscape of the characters and it ends with the girl filming it all. That's the key here, because she's the only pure human in the movie. She's the only true religious also, so I find the main message a conservative and traditional one and I do not know if that's intended. (In the same way I do think of Apocalypse Now as a pro-war movie despite trying to be anti-war).

There's so much effort put into this, but in the end it did not work for me. In line with its main message it lacks emotion and sentiment and is very afraid to use them. That's congruent, but not very interesting basically. As viewers we are not transformed in the movie, although nearly all characters were. But movies are not dead things, they interact with the viewer and that process is what counts. Someone commenting here said this resembled La Famiglia from Scola. I think it's almost the opposite.

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.

I studied abroad in Italy; while there I took a film class in which we viewed this movie and discussed it in relation to contemporary Italian society. The director Cristina Comencini is from a famed Italian film making family, and I feel this movie is a wonderful exhibit of her directorial skill. It may be difficult for an American mind to understand the complexity of relationships and the value of family to the Italian culture, and that could account for its lackluster American reviews (it was generally quite well received in Italy). I do not believe this is an example of Italian film at its best - it is in no way comparable to the works of Rossellini or DeSica, but it is an entertaining and touching film that I would recommend.