Meu Irmão é Filho Único

This film is a dilemma for me. The first half just bounced along. The music was perfect. The energy pulled me along with it, seeing what felt to me like real people's insight into the serious subject matter. Interesting subject matter, interesting characters with motivation, who I cared about. You do laugh at things, even when serious stuff is going on most of the time. I didn't think it could get any better.

And then in a blink of an eye (about an hour in, maybe), it all went to pieces. It dawdled slowly through clichés. I felt like I knew what was coming, and I didn't even care. It was implausible, and at times boring enough for me to lose concentration.

Part of the problem is that it is (as another reviewer noted) about 20 minutes too long. How come are there film directors - talented ones - who haven't yet noticed that 90 minutes is generally enough? 8/10 for the brilliant first half.

'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.

Good Italian movies are few and far between – the last I saw was Zefferelli's "Tea with Mussolini", and before that, "Life Is Beautiful". It seems that Italian movies, good or bad, are rare. If the list in Wikipedia is anything to go by, Italy produces about ten to fifteen features a year, far less than Australia.

This one is about growing up in a post-Mussolini, post-war world as a working class Italian. The narrator, Accio (Elio Germano), bright but temperamental, is not the most pleasant of people (his name means bully). At 13 he is sent off to a seminary by his long-suffering and pious parents but even though it's a fairly humane regime he doesn't last long. So it's back to the family's tiny, crumbling flat to grow up with his older brother, Manrico (Riccardo Scarmarcio). Rejecting religion, Accio comes into the orbit of the local fascists, though he is more interested in action than ideology. The handsome, charming Manrico becomes a communist, and beds Francesca (Diane Fleri), an attractive middle class girl who has joined the comrades. Naturally Accio gets interested in Francesca as well.

The story covers the period 1962 to 1968 and plenty of reference is made to the turmoil of the times, but basically it is about a textbook case of sibling rivalry. Acco and Manrico cannot keep their hands off each other – in order to fight, that is. Acco however does manage to reach some sort of maturity at the end.

The story moves along at a good pace and there are plenty of funny scenes. The best one is the occupation by the communist students during the 1968 disturbances of the Rome conservatory where they perform Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" with the words changed to communist slogans, and are then invaded by the fascists crying "Don't mess with Beethoven" (actually the original words were from a poem by Schiller). The switch of actors (Vittorio Propizio plays the younger Accio) is accomplished in a particularly neat fashion, using a method I last saw used in "Conan the Barbarian" where the older actor is substituted in mid-scene.

In the background is Mussolini's legacy, an angry, confused and humiliated nation without a clear sense of direction. His 1930's "new towns" like Latina on the Pontine marches, jerry-built and badly designed, were crumbling already by the 1960s. Replacement housing had been built but corrupt local officials were holding up its allocation. There is a very satisfying moment at the end of the film when Accio, no stranger to causing a ruckus, takes remedial action.

Not being Italian I probably missed a lot, but the film held my attention for its full length, despite Accio not being a particularly nice lad (then neither was Genghis Khan and he had an interesting life). The film is bright, fresh and fast-moving though I'm not sure about the climax, which is rather on the melodramatic side. If the Italians can bring themselves to make more movies of this quality, I'll come along to watch.

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?

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