Reviews

Mio Fratello È Figlio Unico|My Brother Is an Only Child

Brotherly amore

By BRETT MICHEL | April 23, 2008

3.0 Stars

Elio Germano and Riccardo Scamarcio

“A Fascist in the family is always handy.” Unless it’s a family of leftists in a small Italian town during the turbulent “anni di piombo” (“years of lead”). Beginning in 1962 as young anti-hero Accio (first played by the scrappy Vittorio Emanuele Propizio and later by the talented Elio Germano) is thrown out of seminary and ending in 1978, Daniele Luchetti’s spirited adaptation (written with La meglio gioventú|The Best of Youth scribes Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli) of Antonio Pennacchi’s novel Il fasciocomunista pits the impetuous youth’s political awakening against the Communist convictions of his charismatic older brother Manrico (Gioventú’s Riccardo Scamarcio) as they fall for the same girl (Diane Fleri). Compared in the press notes to period classics like Bertolucci’s Prima della rivoluzione|Before the Revolution and Bellocchio’s I pugni in tasca|Fists in the Pocket, it also echoes Shane Meadows’s 2006’s This Is England, but political doctrines pale next to sibling bonds, at least for Accio, who’s blind to the hazards ahead. Italian | 108 minutes | Kendall Square + West Newton