Mon frère est fils unique

'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.

Luchetti's film ('Il mio fratello è figlio unico') goes from the Sixties into the Seventies in Italy following two brothers from a communist working-class family. Accio Benano, the rebellious younger one, who drops out of seminary very quickly, gives in to the constant indoctrination of a much older bus driver pal named Mario (Luca Zingaretti) and joins the fascist party. Then he falls in love with Francesca (Diane Fleri), the girlfriend (the first of a series) of his Lothario older brother Manrico (blue-eyed dreamboat Riccardo Scamarcio). Manrico becomes a leftist leader in '68 and moves on to terrorist activities in the Seventies. Accio's black-shirt cohorts cause their share of bother too, of course, but they are depicted as both inept and betraying Accio's confidence. Eventually the latter realizes he's a leftist too at heart. (He only adopted fascism because he wanted to be contrary.) This change in Accio comes almost in time to save Manrico from big trouble.

It took me a while to adjust to the shift in actors when Accio goes from early to late teens. No doubt Elio Germano was an inevitable choice for the older Accio because of his sweet, ironic presence: he's a lovely actor. But the younger actor, Vittorio Emanuele Propizio, and the incidents Accio's involved in early on, project a spirit of fun and craziness that I missed thereafter. In fact, the promise of the early sequences gets dissipated in what becomes an increasingly plodding (and overly telescoped) series of events as Accio's and Manrico's politics, love lives, and family involvements criss-cross over the years.

Reports from those who've read Antonio Pennacchi's amusingly titled novel 'Il fasciocommunista' say the movie lightens things up, but Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, who collaborated on the screen adaptation, seem to have gotten bogged down and too literally followed the story after those light-hearted and promising beginnings. Mind you, Petraglia and Rulli are no slouches: they also scripted the recent 'Criminal Romance' (veteran actor Michele Placido's 2005 directorial debut, which also features Scamarcio) as well as the highly successful theatrically released TV miniseries 'The Best of Youth,' whose decade-sweeping plot this film's somewhat echoes.

A memorable set piece shows Manrico introducing a '68 reworking of Beethovan's 'Ode to Joy' with revolutionary lyrics. During the performance Mario's fascist hooligans move in, and their targeting his own brother leads to Accio's final break with the right.

The family's base is Latina, a town created by Mussolini south of Rome, which makes an ever-present reminder of heavy Italian legacies. Mario represents the element who refuse to erase or forget the nation's fascist past. He argues (among other things) that there's a worthwhile legacy of architecture. Indeed fascist architecture does have a certain kitsch charm one ought not reject too easily; and an inability to come to terms with the fascist past is surely one of the main reasons for Italy's muddled self-image. This story is a stab at dealing with that psychological issue in a healthy way.

'My Brother Is an Only Child,' which was rejected by the Cannes jury for Official Entry status, lacks the fluidity of Gabriele Muccino's 'Io come te nessuno mai' (which, though very different, comes to mind for its blending of coming of age, family conflict, and politics) but it has a kind of vernacular vigor. It's true, Italian cinema continues to go through a largely lackluster period, and Italian film-goers appear to have been bitterly disappointed with Luchetti's latest. That's a bit of a shame, because there is a lot of charm and humanity here, and for anyone interested in Italy and its modern history, this should be required viewing.

Seen during a limited run in Paris, October 17, 2007.

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?

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.