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My Brother is an Only Child (Mio fratello e figlio unico) is a coming-of-age story about a whole country, as told through the very different political beliefs of two brothers.
The film, based on Antonio Pennacchi's novel Il Fasciocomunista, is a mix of comedy and drama centred on an Italian family during the 1960s and '70s.
Specifically, the story unfolds from the point of view of Accio, a younger brother we meet as he enters a seminary in 1962.
Accio (played as an adolescent by Vittorio Emanuele Propizio) is an intense, inquisitive kid who gets only one visitor while he's away studying for the priesthood -- his older brother Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio).
Manrico visits him hoping to "make him normal," that is, interested in girls and everyday life, and before too long, Accio indeed loses his vocation over those ever-pesky sins of the flesh.
He leaves the seminary. His disappointed parents have no idea what to do with him when he gets home, and to them, his ambition to study Latin and skip technical school for arts seems new and dangerous.
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Older brother Manrico is a communist, and while he dutifully takes on work at the factory in their town, Latina -- where his father also works -- it isn't long before he's trying to organize the workers. Latina, as it happens, is a town Mussolini created out of former swampland, and younger brother Accio (played as a young adult by Elio Germano) is influenced by a local linen salesman to join the Fascist party.
The party holds up a picture of a perfect Italy that appeals to Accio, and he never notices the feet of clay on his fellow blackshirts.
Given their opposite political beliefs, there is endless verbal friction and frequent fistfights between Accio and Manrico. Then Manrico falls in love with Francesca (Diane Fleri), who shares his political beliefs. When Accio also falls for her, the relationship between the brothers gets even more tense.
In time, Accio gets wise to the huge flaws in his political party. Manrico is not so lucky.
Through Accio and Manrico and their opposing views, My Brother is an Only Child conveys some of the huge social and political changes taking place in Italy, and everywhere else, during the period.
More interesting than the "bigger picture," however, are the little details around the main narrative, the minutiae of people's everyday lives.
The film seems nostalgic for a more innocent past, whether or not it ever actually existed, in the way it displays the authority of the brothers' parents, for example, or shows how stunned everyone is over the discovery that their sister is using a form of birth control.
Certainly, everyone seems to be moving from innocence to experience.
My Brother is an Only Child is often very funny, and when the last act goes all quiet and serious, it's a bit of a jolt.
The film has been compared to some of Bernardo Bertolucci's films from the '60s, but My Brother is an Only Child is more like Bertolucci lite, a fond backward glance rather than a view from the centre of the action.
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.
She won a David di Donatello Award for best supporting actress for her work here, one of four such awards (and six other nominations) given the film.
My Brother is an Only Child is in Italian with English subtitles.
(This film is rated 14-A)