Bruno is a unhappy and somewhat troubled middle-aged college Professor living in Milan with a girlfriend he cannot commit too and the only way that he  makes his days bearable is by taking prescription drugs illegally obtained at a local park.  One day Valeria his sister turns up on his doorstep to tell him that their mother is terminally ill and that he must come home to Livorno.  It seems that Bruno has avoided his family, especially his mother, since he left many years ago and it takes some hefty persuasion to make him make the journey despite the urgency of it.

Clearly Bruno has issues, and as the story unwinds through a whole series of flashbacks, we learn that with this complex family history with its many layers, he certainly wasn’t the only one. Anna his mother was always a real beauty which was a source of conflict with her abusive husband whom she left when the children were very young. She was at best naive and always managed to hook up with a succession handsome men who either abused or neglected her before throwing her out.  The children where snatched back and forth between her and their father and somehow what ever befell them, the ever optimistic Anna always believed and promised them that things would be better tomorrow.

As a kid, Bruno was intelligent and artistic but he seemed to have inherited the grumpiness of his father, and certainly his present life yields him no joy.  But as soon as he spends time with his dying mother whom he was stayed away from all this years in a huff, he gradually realizes through her about some of the pleasures of life that he has been missing.  He eventually finds it hard to resist Anna’s irrepresible gift for happiness that he has for so long begrudged.

In this rich Italian family comedy/drama that spans some four decades there are plenty of twists and turns that are not always predictable especially towards the end.  It has all the makings of a glorious melodrama …. have your kleenexs at the ready … but as multi-faceted the plot scenarios were, they were extremely realistic and anything but exaggerated as the term implies.

It’s the type of movie that I always think that Italian filmmakers are the masters of.  In fact it was their official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Movie last year. Beautifully written and directed Paolo Vizri, it is superbly acted by a brilliant cast that includes legendary Italian Actress Stefania Sandrelli whose lengthy resume includes Bertolucci’s ‘The Conformist’ in 1970. 

Coming in at 2 hours and 2 minutes long, have a large glass of wine ….. besides the kleenex that is ….. but you wont regret it.

★★★★★★★★