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Bookmark this pageMy Brother Is an Only Child (2007)
Director: Daniele Luchetti
Movie review
From Time Out London
Based on Antonio Pennacchi’s bestselling novel, ‘Il Fasciocomunista’ and written by Italy’s premier screenwriting duo, Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, this is as lively, witty, funny and intelligent a meditation on Italy’s Fascist inheritance as we’re likely to get.Coursing through the ’60s, it follows the mirrored experiences of two politically-divided brothers from working-class Latina (the Mussolini-built town outside Rome used by Paolo Sorrentino as the symbolic locus for ‘The Family Friend’): awkward, interrogative Accio and his older Casanova-skilled brother Manrico. As mother’s favourite, Manrico gets ever deeper involved with the revolutionary left, while the sharp-tongued contrarian Accio, expelled from his seminary, falls under the influence of dogmatic father-figure, Mario and his band of thuggish Fascist ‘aristocrats’, occasioning fraternal punch-ups on the picket lines and stretching the battling brothers’ mutual loyalty to the breaking point.
Lacking the length and depth of Petraglia and Rulli’s magnum opus ‘The Best of Youth’, Luchetti’s film nevertheless covers much the same ground in entertaining, serio-comic fashion. A great deal of the film’s lightness and humour comes from the acting, not least the delightful, spiky and engaging performances of Vittorio Emanuele Propizio and Elio Germano as the adolescent and mature Accio.
It’s a fundamentally satiric, domestic vision of a destructive ‘civil war’ that serves a gentle critique of the more po-faced ‘heavy’ examinations of Italy’s past (including the writers’ own) which manages to evoke, but never trivialise, the mad, internecine conflicts of recent Italian political history. Sprightly-directed, it is only slightly spoilt by an unnecessarily grand and overly sentimental ending.
Author: Wally Hammond
Time Out London Issue 1963 – April 3 – 9
User reviews of this film
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- Raf said...
- Posted on Dec 09 2008 09:22 Great film from Daniele Lucchetti, a very entertaining and realistic picture of Italian’s life in the sixty’s.
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- fyldelass said...
- Posted on Nov 14 2008 19:38 Loved it; a superbly acted movie. Evokes the politics of Italy, so much a part of an italian's make-up even today.
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- Yuri said...
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Posted on Apr 25 2008 10:32
They did not make use of the same methods to get into power, though. Mussolini was legally appointed by King Victor Emmanuel III and enjoyed support by a majority in the parliament. The communists, on the other hand, staged a revolution to overthrow the Tsar.
That said, the claim that fascism and communism are the same is completely absurd. Two entirely different things with different values, different ethics, different practical outcomes. - Report as inappropriate
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- Jon said...
- Posted on Apr 05 2008 17:33 Max - you should read more and avoid sweeping statements. If you said they may use the ame methods to get into power then that would be ok I guess
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- Max said...
- Posted on Apr 03 2008 20:42 this film clearly shows that communism and fascism are the same thing. but somehow fascism has been considered much worst in our society because of world war 2 loss
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Cast & crew
Director: Daniele Luchetti
Cast: Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio, Diane Fleri, Luca Zingaretti, Franco Piersanti, Claudio Collepiccolo full cast
Rated: 12A
Duration: 100 mins
UK Release: Apr 4 2008
US Release: Apr 20 2007
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