How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 16 April 2013
This article is a review of ME AND YOU. |
“I’ll have my coffin put on top of yours. Like a bunk bed,” Lorenzeo to his grandmother
It’s been a decade since maestro helmer Bernado Bertolucci’s last film, THE DREAMERS, where he launched Eva Green and Louis Garrel on to the cinema-going public. A filmmaker of incredible panache, he delivers the sexy and thoughtful, from LAST TANGO IN PARIS and 1900 to LITTLE BUDDHA and THE LAST EMPEROR. His absence from our screens has been due to ill health. It is discernible in ME AND YOU that his reduced mobility has created an almost theatrical experience – a confined location perhaps representing a state of mind?
It’s been a decade since maestro helmer Bernado Bertolucci’s last film, THE DREAMERS, where he launched Eva Green and Louis Garrel on to the cinema-going public. A filmmaker of incredible panache, he delivers the sexy and thoughtful, from LAST TANGO IN PARIS and 1900 to LITTLE BUDDHA and THE LAST EMPEROR. His absence from our screens has been due to ill health. It is discernible in ME AND YOU that his reduced mobility has created an almost theatrical experience – a confined location perhaps representing a state of mind?
|
|
Immediately we meet teenager Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), precocious, and so independently minded his mother bemoans her inability to provide maternal affection. Insular and apparently only desiring of cursory human interactions; evidenced in a pet store, talking to the cashier is more a gentle interrogation than a conversation. There’s a sad image of an armadillo running a figure eight pattern in a small tank – lingering enough to suggest the motif will recur later.
Lorenzo’s wheelchair-bound therapist suggests he should go on a school ski trip, to the delight of his parents who want to see him being sociable. It’s all a ruse of course. Taking the money, Lorenzo sets up an elaborate plan to stay in his apartment building’s basement for a week with his laptop. He’s a bit of a brat, but one has to admire his chutzpah. Purchasing the exact amount of food (and an ant farm), and making the dusty room as liveable as possible, he appears to be a content self-marooned Robinson Crusoe. The idyll is scuppered when his drug-addict, model beautiful, 25 year old half-sister, Olivia, crashes his sanctuary looking for a box of her things, packed away by Lorenzo’s mother (her step-mother). Olivia (Tea Falco) ignores his pleas for solitude, threatening to reveal his deceit unless he allows her to go cold turkey, in order to be with her amour, who demands Olivia’s sobriety.
The two have been estranged, and what follows is a charming exploration of siblinghood. The creative team look to peel away the defensive barricade of self-denial that their spiky tête-à-têtes reveal. The non-bland camera angles make up for the lack of common director flourishes of fluidity of movement. Even a Bertolucci in a minor key is something worth your time.