User reviews

The only thing wrong with this movie, is that it isn't as good as Best Of Youth, but nobody expects anything to be, especially in under 3 hours. This is the story of a boy, plunged into adulthood, in many ways metaphorically. Few stories can capture the turmoil of a child dealing with adulthood the way this one does.

The camera work is great. The audience is led seamlessly through characters' emotions. The soundtrack is pulled from our psyche. This has all the makings of a classic. Few real life frustrations are overlooked. Friendship, social class, race, religion, crime, family, love, sex, are all parts of growing up, and all play a role in this movie.

These writers' and this director have succeeded again.

Agree completely with the comment of David from Seattle (the only other comment on the film so far). Just saw it on Italian TV and was blown away--a remarkable work of the humanist cinema (insofar as such a term exists anymore). I had read some festival reviews of the film that basically criticized it because it didn't have the wide scope of the "Best of Youth", but that's hardly grounds to penalize a film that does so many things through its central story.

The basic plot sounds like it could be tedious--a boy from a wealthy industrialist family who is thought drowned is saved by a refugee boat. He becomes especially close to a Romanian brother and sister and in many ways ties his own fate to theirs. The film is so beautifully directed--subtle, never obvious, not belabored or sentimental--that it feels as much like it is observed so much as created for the screen.

No recent film can top "The Best of Youth", but this is also great. I hope more people outside Italy get a chance to see it. Giordana is the best Italian director at work now.