Our Life

Germano shared the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his lead turn in this amiable but confused drama – something like a lightweight Ken Loach film – as Claudio, a young, working-class husband and father who toils on a building site on the edge of Rome. The film’s early scenes are at pains to describe what a happy life Claudio and his pregnant wife Elena (Ragonese) share with their two young children and various friends and family – so much so that you know something terrible must be imminent. But when it comes it fatally splinters the drama so that we end up with an odd mix of tragedy, comedy and romance as Germano rebuilds his life, puts renewed energy into his work by persuading a property magnate to give him a contract and discovers that his new friendship with a Romanian woman and her son conflicts awkwardly with a skeleton in his cupboard at work. You sense the director is trying to say something about the individualism of modern Italy and new support structures away from the traditional family, but most ideas are buried beneath sentiment and slapdash storytelling, even if the film has an attractive, documentary-style visual energy.