A very good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Felix van Groeningen and since it was available on Netflix, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, I always had a weak spot for van Groeningen’s work and I think it was probably his most ambitious work so far. Indeed, it was one thing to direct his first English speaking feature with ‘Beautiful Boy’ but it seemed to be even trickier to do a movie in Italian with a bunch of Italian actors. What was even more impressive was how he completely nailed it. Indeed, it turned out to be such an epic and yet intimate friendship going over more than 3 decades. I really loved the opening scenes and it reminded me of the days I was growing up in a small village in France. Indeed, I did exactly the same things these boys were doing, even building a dam on some stream and I had to think about the buddies I used to have at the time. However, this cute childhood friendship was not the only purpose of this movie. Indeed, it was above all about how these 2 kids grew up apart and then became BFF’s once again when they were adults and, also in this case, the damned thing was quite spellbinding to behold. The cool thing was that van Groeningen never judged his characters, he never gave some clear answers about what might be tormenting them, he just showed them as they are and it was a quite beautiful to behold. Eventually, the only thing that prevented this movie from being really great was the fact that, even though their relationship was quite mesmerizing, neither Pietro or Bruno as characters or individuals were really fascinating after all. Sure, they were interesting but they never really dazzled me though. Anyway, to conclude, even if I still prefer ‘The Broken Circle Breakdown’, this was another really strong directorial effort from Felix van Groeningen and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.