Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2014

[Chris Knipp]

DANIELE LUCHETTI: THOSE HAPPY YEARS/ANNI FELICI (2013)



Growing up bohemian in the Seventies

Luchetti's "most autobiographical movie yet" is however not a straightforward account but a riff on a set of characters drawn from his life growing up in the Seventies, which is reimagined conventionally, but with a certain emotion and charm, even if both those qualities are telegraphed operatically. There is the father who wants to be a groundbreaking conceptual artist but comes up only with conventional titillation, who keeps his wife at arm's length while cheating on her with nude "models." There is the artist's withholding, always-critical mother, part of an artistic and intellectual family; the wife's family of people successful in business. And there are the two cute little boys, the older of whom, Dario (Samuel Garofalo) gets a video camera and turns out to be a budding filmmaker, shooting the mother's feminist convocation in the Camargue with the boys and her husband's lesbian art dealer, with whom she has an affair and falls in love. Guido's two big conceptual pieces seem crudely conceived, and there is too much yelling at times. But the film is original for focusing mostly on women. A more mature, less pretty Kim Rossi Stuart is very watchable here as dad Guido, and Micaela Ramazotti is well cast as the well-meaning, tormented wife Serena, who turns out to be the really unconventional one. Whether it's healthy for a kid to having parents who carry out their sexual explorations openly is a question that's left open-eneded, but while director said in a Lincoln Center Q&A that the title is ironic, the narrator twice says he realized the years of his youth were happy, even though the family may not have known it at the time. On the other hand when Dario throws himself in the river after hearing his parents frankly declare their extramarital affairs, it's surely a cry for help. He's rescued and they all drive home, though. There is lots of drama, but nothing too deep here. Sure, this may be more autobiographical than My Brother Is an Only Child, or his 2010 Our Life, but its historical content is relatively vague and its overall shape more familiar. Luchetti remains a reliably entertaining but never very profound director; however, with Serena's lesbian affair he takes a conventional Italian movie in an unaccustomed direction.

Those Happy Years/Anni felici, 106 mins., debuted at Toronto Sept. 2013 and showed at some other big festivals including London and Hong Kong. It opened in France 28 May 2014 under the title Ton absence (Your Absence), with only fair reviews (Allociné press rating 3.1). Screened for this review as part of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema at Lincoln Center 6 June 2014, where it was presented as the opening night film.