Growing up in small-town Italy during the '60s and '70s, brothers Accio (Elio Germano) and Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) embody and celebrate opposing political stances, but share an impassioned love of the same woman that threatens to drive them to blows. Director Daniele Luchetti's political comedy Mio Fratello È Figlio Unico (aka My Brother Is an Only Child, 2007) observes the brothers over the course of 15 years, against the ever-shifting backdrop of tumultuous Italian sociopolitical history.
During that time span, the siblings' loyalties will fluctuate; they will endure arguments and quarrels, and find themselves separated by the ravages of time and circumstance and reunited magnetically by the wisdom of age. In time, they will come to a firmer and clearer understanding of not only the differences but the similarities that they harbor. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
The linkage in this movie between politics and family dynamics is a point well taken, but the movie -- whose sense of frenetic activity going nowhere is captured by Luchetti's buoyant camera -- does go on and on before anyone learns anything.
You don't need a degree in political science to love this film...The film entertainingly demonstrates that the bonds of blood are stronger than those of ideology.
Director Daniele Luchetti's strategy is to personify the long-standing divisions of his homeland in a pair of siblings, but make the characters so vital that we don't feel we're being browbeaten with political allegory.
In a sense, the movie is about Accio's appreciation of the practical limits of ideology and the practical uses of rebellion, and it's a poignant realization.
Daniele Luchetti's fluent, heartfelt Italian picture is the story of two brothers born after the war, who come of age in the 1960s and drift apart in the paranoid, violent, sour political atmosphere of Italy in the 70s.
This is such a lovely film from writer/director Daniele Luchetti, nostalgic perhaps, but with that indefinable Italian whimsy that takes serious political themes and undermines them beautifully.
Despite the awards pedigree, the drama is a bit of a slog at times, with Accio taking seemingly ages to come of age, but nobody said growing up was easy.
The best thing about the movie are the performances, all of which are outstanding; in particular, Angela Finocchiaro, who plays the long-suffering mother, is superb.
A coming-of-age story about a young man who - like the era he was born into - has no idea how to come of age, except by violent fits and starts, in all directions, to varying ends, and ready to change course whenever the mood strikes.
"There's nothing in the middle of road but yellow lines and dead armadillos." - Jim Hightower "My Brother Is An Only Child" starts in 1962 in Italy where Accio Benassi(Elio Germano) is in a seminary studying to be a priest. He does well until he discovers masturbation and quits, reasoning that priests should be
pure.(Good luck with that, by the way.) Returning home, he learns that his parents(Angela Finocchiaro & Massimo Popolizio) will not let him study Latin, instead forcing him to go to technical school, so he can learn something practical. To make matters worse, his sister Violetta(Alba Rohrwacher) is allowed to pursue the cello. Temporarily running away solves nothing but joining up with the Fascists through Mario(Luca Zingaretti) at least gives him a sense of purpose. It also gives him a point of argument with his older brother Manrico(Riccardo Scamarcio) and his cute girlfriend Francesca(Diane Fleri), both Communists. "My Brother Is An Only Child" is an engaging examination of radical politics in Italy in the 1960's, minus the cliches, musical cues and references to historical events which takes the movie down to a personal level. Throughout, the Communists and Fascists appear to resemble little more than rival street gangs(you could make a pretty good Romeo and Juliet story out of this). They are fighting for the present as the Communists represent an idealized future while the Fascists represent a nonexistent past. Regardless, the movie makes a potent argument against violence waged for any cause.
April 9, 2009
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
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