nmegahey Like the ground-breaking Best of Youth, My Brother is an Only Child (Mio fratello è figlio unico) covers a key period of political turmoil in Italian history seen in a relatable context from the perspective of an ordinary family. Daniele Luchetti enlists the screenwriters of the earlier successful TV mini-series Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli and manages to bring the same sense of passion and urgency to Antonio Pennacchio's original novel and the autobiographical elements that inspired it.My Brother is an Only Child covers a more condensed period of political turmoil from 1962 to 1977 that had an intense impact on a generation not only in Italy, but in many parts of Europe and the USA. There's something about the Italian experience however that manages to bring the swirl of forces at work into even greater focus, particularly in the way that they impact on the Benassi family, living significantly in the recently built town of Latina, founded by Mussolini in the fascist style. Developed entirely in eight weeks, the cracks however are now beginning to show.The times they are a-changing and the former adherence to authority - mainly religious in the Benassi family - is being challenged by their two sons Accio and Manrico. The older brother Manrico has already developed left-wing revolutionary tendencies, and it doesn't take more than a revealing photo of actress Marisa Allasio to cause a crisis of faith in his younger brother Accio who has gone into a seminary in 1962. Accio however also has a crisis of faith in the Communism following the Cuban missile crisis, and turns instead to Fascism, recognising or believing that the ideals and achievements of Il Duce weren't all bad.That's quite an ideological split in the Benassi family and it's compounded by the fact that they are quite a bunch of headstrong hotheads. Particularly the young Accio, who is still thrashing around for something to believe in, leading him down some very dark alleys, but Manrico also takes his activism to extremes. As dissatisfaction spills over onto the streets in the late sixties in mob violence, this results in some pronounced family tensions, but there are also romantic complications that reflect the film's treatment of the theme of loss of innocence.Daniele Luchetti's pacy direction holds the wide dynamic of the film together well, getting right to the heart of the Italian passions and its fervour for life. Avoiding any kind of artificial 60s/70s period recreation (of the kind seen for example in Bertolucci's The Dreamers), and eliciting engaging performances from a young cast, My Brother is an Only Child has a wonderful naturalistic freshness and immediacy that speaks about love and youth, about ideals and disillusionment that speaks about life rather than making any political points specific only to Italy.

paul2001sw-1 '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.

Roland E. Zwick Based on the novel by Antonio Pennacci, "My Brother is an Only Child" is a tale of two brothers growing up in Italy in the turbulent 1960s and '70s. Though remarkably alike in disposition and temperament, the two siblings, nevertheless, find themselves on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Manrico (Riccardo Scamarrio), the older of the two, is a committed Communist who rallies the workers in his town to stand up for their rights. Accio (Elio Germano), his younger brother and also the narrator of the story, is a hardcore Fascist who venerates Mussolini and participates in violent protests against the Marxists. A hothead and a bully by nature, Accio (the name actually means "bully" in Italian) finds a convenient outlet for his rage and violence in the thuggery and strong arm tactics he and his fellow fascists use against their adversaries. Manrico and Accio have obviously had a tumultuous love-hate relationship their entire lives, and things get even more complicated when Accio falls in love with Manrico's girlfriend, Francesca. But each man must ultimately decide where his true loyalty finally lies - with family or with the ideological cause that moves and empowers him. This becomes an even more complex question when one of the brothers becomes increasingly disillusioned with the goals and tactics used by his side, while the other grows increasingly radicalized in his commitment to his.Director Daniele Luchetti brings renewed life to the coming-of-age genre with his intense concentration on the sociopolitical elements of the story. It gets so bad between the two warring factions that even a performance of Beethoven becomes a pretext for bloodshed and violence. And the constant tussling between the two brothers - who can't seem to see eye-to-eye on anything except the girl they love - becomes a microcosmic reflection of the larger world around them.Uniformly superb performances and naturalistic direction make this a complex and ultimately very moving study of brotherhood, family, maturity and commitment.

Chris Knipp 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.