Il più bel giorno della mia vita

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.

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.

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!

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.