Groupthink doesn’t live here, critical thought does.
Welcome!
This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.
Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through .
Thanks a lot acorns!
Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!
Bernardo Bertolucci’s long awaited return to filmmaking after a decade-long absence is a beautifully photographed and provocative coming-of-age drama in the vein of Bertolucci’s “La Luna” and his last film “The Dreamers.”
As its title portends “Me and You” is an intimate film whose emphasis relies on the connection between its two main characters. The story is about two young people attempting to maintain their individuality and humanity with DIY tools of both impractical and idealistic designs.
The labyrinthine basement of a lush Italian apartment building is the claustrophobic setting where 14-year-old Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) plans to hide out for a week rather than attend a snowboarding camp where his mother (Sonia Bergamasco) believes him to be. His mother’s close proximity in their upstairs apartment adds a layer of tension to Lorenzo’s diversion.
With a small fridge filled with Cokes and junk food, Lorenzo would rather play video games on his laptop in splendid isolation than face the outside world. Jacopo Olmo Antinori’s uncanny resemblance to a young Malcolm McDowell — circa “A Clockwork Orange” — places him as an awkward young man of untold potential. He puts on a cold front to his shrink. Insecure and smothered by his relationship with his overbearing mother, Lorenzo desperately needs some quality time alone.
Accidentally discovered by his 25-year-old heroin-addicted stepsister Olivia (Tea Falco), Lorenzo is forced to give up his privacy while her proposed one-night’s stay in the basement with him is prolonged to fill up the entire week. Romantic tension bristles between the two as Sonia directly and obliquely challenges Lorenzo’s still-forming ideas about the world around him. Sonia’s view of the woman who stole her father away is not as flattering as Lorenzo’s perception of his mother. As Sonia goes cold turkey, Lorenzo steps up to care for her even as his curiosity about her feminine nature is piqued.
“Me and You” is Bertolucci’s most restrained film. Its nuance of thematic tones vibrates in a low hum of deeply personal emotional conflict and physical displacement. It is a enduring character study that eschews clichés in favor of discovering elemental truths regarding how young people mature through the choices they make. Lorenzo and Olivia need one another more than they realize, and just as much as they intuitively know.
