The Italian director Daniele Luchetti's new movie, My Brother Is an Only Child, has a script that the director worked on with Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli; Petraglia and Rulli co-wrote The Best of Youth, a sensational six-hour family saga, spanning four decades, that played American theaters in 2005. At first glance, My Brother could pass for The Best of Youth: The Portable Edition. Like the earlier epic, it deals with the political battles of the sixties, and their implosion in the terrorist-ridden Italy of the seventies, as reflected in the relationship of two brothers. The central figure is Accio, the brother who, as a boy teetering on the brink of puberty, wants to be a priest. For a few scenes I was afraid that the movie was going to be one of those European mood pieces that traps you in a monastery with some dumb cluck who takes the whole movie to figure out that he needs to get the hell out of there, but once Accio becomes both confused and emboldened by his hormonal urges, he rethinks his career plan gratifyling quick and moves back in with his family. Disillusioned from age thirteen on, Accio (who's played by Elio Germano from around the time that his skin breaks out), has little choice but to declare himself a fascist, especially since his older brother Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) is both an announced Communist and a natural born heartthrob who effortlessly secures the undying romantic devotion of Francesca, played by Diane Fleri, a twenty-three-year-old French actress who could probably persuade Richard Dawkins to run for president on the Flat Earth Party ticket.
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