NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

ThurstonHunger Had the trappings of a dysfunctional family dramadey, but sans much comedy. A family of four with the two kids about to leave the nest, caught my middle-aging eye (as opposed to my aging middle eye). The couple dealing with weariness on the surface with each other, but perhaps more truthfully with themselves...the tension of teenagers trying on adult situations too, these set me up with enough interest.All four family members come with their own crises, largely self-made and each oblivious to the others in the family. For some reason that obliviousness seemed to hurt me the viewer, more than the characters themselves.The father and son in the movie confuse sex with love. Italian men may do this better than others, it's debatable. The women stumble through sex while trying to find their careers, but each career is contingent upon the applause of others (art-house small theatre for mom, solid gold dancing and canned TV clapping for the daughter).By the way, all four family members are drop-dead good looking. Three are insecure about it, while the daughter pretty much banks on her beauty. She literally sleeps with her mirror, both soundly and while in coitus with a stepping stone stage hand leading towards the television altar. Does it matter that the role is literally that of a harem girl.To make the family members see each other, Dad is sent reeling by an old flame, even more powerfully attractive than the stunning mother. The flame's (Monica Belluci's) beauty is only over-shadowed by a vacant beach-house that her mother owns somewhere on the shoreline of heaven.Typically in these movies, we are fed some transcendent family epiphany as they rally together while facing their flaws. And I often don't mind those moments as I think there are genuine truths within them, but this film does something a bit bizarre.Spoiler coming...The car accident that nearly kills the father and as expected thereby saves the father, feels really wrong. Comments in the chat section of IMDb talk about Carlo at the end, the forced smile and the not-so-chance meeting the bellisima Belluci-ma. Also we see she that her character did in fact leave her husband.A day after watching this, I cannot shake the notion that this movie seems like an apology from the director (or the writer or a producer) to his lover for not leaving his family. And something tells me his own "car wreck" preventing him from joining her was only a symbolic one.I'm certain his jilted lover will always remember him, and not as kindly as this film would have one believe.

leplatypus "La" Bellucci being Italian and famous, she features in Italian productions that can reach my french pastures, so I can keep in touch with this cool country: Italia has everything ready to make people enjoy life: clothes, music, pasta,.. Maybe that's why Italians are said to be smiling French, and French sad Italians! What is also striking after watching Italian TV is that the ordinary people has more weight there than in France where they turn invisible in front of the "People"! So, it isn't a surprise that this movie is about an ordinary family, except that every member seems very unhappy and broken. It's always paradoxical for me because it doesn't suppose to be like this: Married with children, it is all that it takes to have a perfect life! I'm single and I know the sadness to lead a lonely life.At the end, they gather themselves together and are closer than ever! In between, they face their private dragons, their biggest tragedies, they are at each other's throats. For more than 20 minutes, the atmosphere is very heavy, with cries, shoots, slaps… So, they learn to survive and forgive! So, just watch this movie and I'm sure you will say, as me, I will remember it!

dlpatrick1 This movie is hard to absorb, partly because the dialogue is difficult in translation and partly because of the fading and mixing of scenes that introduce the 4 character stories within. Four people in a family so plausibly like middle class families everywhere, except here in Italy the members are more likely to be beautiful, handsome, suave, and worth staring at for some feature or another. Muccino shows us that the happiness we work for within a family is easily thrown away (no wonder there is so much divorce), but that the common need to have one place where we think we can be recognized and loved for who we are can bind even the most dysfunctional family unit. Each character here is struggling with ego. Carlo (the handsome Fabrizio Bentivoglio whose hair belongs on marble statues) wants romantic love and an escape from boredom of his job and family -- he ought to have had something different, but he doesn't, and honestly he is the middle of middle class personified -- a salesman working on number 8 sale. Guilia (Larua Morante -- among the most beautiful of Italian actresses currently) is hopelessly insecure but pictures herself as a great stage actress, which is might possibly be -- if it really was her obsession -- the real obsession being to retain the normality of her marriage facade. Valentina (Nicoletta Romanoff) is the a self absorbed teen age bod beautiful with the hips and hair of her generation -- so anxious for a bit role in a dreadful television programme to recognize her beauty. And finally Paolo (A Muccino relative surely) desperate for recognition of his specialness. All want recognition for the specialness and at the same time the security of the familiar. Every moment of this movie shows the tension between the desire for a self-perceived "fame" or "happiness" based on selfishness and the pull that conventional family love provides. These characters recognize true happiness when the routine is threatened and Fabrizio faces possible paraplegia. The other three cannot (although they do) contemplate anything but return to the beginning. Scene after scene develops the characters -- and portrays their dilemma of self versus family -- something many of us continually face when lucky enough to have a unit that is at the same time crushing of self and supportive of "love". The ending is perfect -- smile, Fabrizio-- One was left knowing that nothing had really changed for this family or the individuals involved although 3 of them appeared to get what they wanted -- and even Fabrizio got his "break" from routine. Maybe he was the unluckiest and had to smile the hardest as he built his selfish love on a dream that had no apparent fulfillment (NO BRIEF ENCOUNTER THIS -- just a desire for a Brief Encounter). I imagine this movie was very disappointing to many -- it was a treat to one who scoured the video store for something different and found a depiction of every day life that was hopeful and helpless and maybe the description of a happiness that is never fully satisfactory but we are required in the end to accept -- and to live without ever being fully aware.

TdSmth5 Just like the director's previous effort _The Last Kiss_ this movie is about life. And no one brings more realism to his representations of the human condition than Muccino. There's pain and suffering, there's pleasures and elation, loss and gain, sadness and happiness but mostly a search to find ourselves in the time we have been given. Unlike one-dimensional American movies, Muccino's films show how with pleasure comes pain and that in pain are the seeds of pleasure. The acting is perfect. Bellucci looks gorgeous and so does Laura Morante. There is so much going on in this film that invariably, some story lines will be less interesting to some than others. This and _The Last Kiss_ are great celebrations of life.