There are many different ways to tell the story of a family drama, and with this particular Italian one, they just shouted it. This intriguing same-sex fathers and son tale with its ground-breaking scenario sadly overwhelmed its potential subtle family dynamics by unnecessarily making every single step such a melodrama.
Simone (Francesco Scianna) and Paolo (Filippo Timi) are on the threshold of celebrating their 20th Anniversary as a couple along with their teenage son Leone (Francesco Gheghi). The ‘mother’ was Tilly (Jodhi May) a friend of the couple who had acted as a surrogate and was not involved in the family’s daily lives.
On the outside, they seemed like one big happy family: Paulo runs his own restaurant, and Simone who had put aside his ambitions to be an architect, runs his own furniture store. But when Simone discovers that Paulo has been having a secret affair for the past two years, all hell lets loose. Literally. Evidently, no one can throw bigger histrionics than an aggrieved gay Italian man.
Meanwhile, Leone is dealing with his puberty, and with all his schoolmates’ assumption that he must be gay (because of his two gay dads). And it seems likely that Anna may only want to be his girlfriend because she is intrigued by his family situation, and also just to freak out her own bigoted mother,
As the Dad’s break up gets nastier and nastier and they fight over their split, they now both want to lay claim to being Leone’s main parent. Initially, they had made a cocktail of both their sperm which impregnated Tilly, but now they want to get actual DBA tests to see which of them is the actual biological father.
One gets the sense that director (co-writer) Marco Simon Puccioni was full of good intentions in making this film with its important message about what makes a family. We really wanted to like it more, but Puccioni’s inability to decide if this was meant to be a comedy or drama ….. or just an out and out melodrama …. left us feeling let down and disappointed
The one bright spot of this Netflix movie was the performance of young Francesco Gheghi as Leone, who had all the markings of a future Timothy Chalamet
