With the warm glow of hindsight, filmmaker Daniele Luchetti has carved a career out of chronicling the years of his youth. Italy in the 1960s and 1970s has afforded a complex backdrop for the writer/director’s exploration of life, love, politics and personal development, first through the story of siblings on opposite sides of the ideological divide in 2007’s My Brother Is an Only Child, and then in a father’s struggle to provide for his family in 2010’s La nostra vita. Those Happy Years (Anni felici) harks back to the same time and skirts similar themes, but also offers Luchetti’s most intimate work to date. Here, he looks back on his own upbringing, in a loosely autobiographical effort designed to capture the emotions from his memories, if not the exact details.
As explained at the outset by the film’s narrator and the filmmaker’s screen surrogate, the adult Dario (voiced by Luchetti himself), Those Happy Years tells the history of his family in the summer of 1974. At the age of fourteen, Dario (newcomer Samuel Garofalo) and his younger brother Paolo (Niccolò Calvagna, Rabbia in pugno) bore witness to his parents’ tumultuous marriage, its turning point, and the resulting fallout. With innocent eyes slowly clouding over with complications, the boys offer the feature a privileged view of the unravelling of a relationship, one that the audience always understands even if the youthful guides don’t. Yet, even as the feature flits through events pleasant and not so, the sentiment and certainty of the title never wavers.
Their father, Guido (Kim Rossi Stuart, Angel of Evil), is an avant-garde artist chasing success, and their mother, Serena (Micaela Ramazzotti, Pretty Butterflies), the supportive homemaker standing by her family. After Serena disrupts an important Milan showing of Guido’s work, leading to a negative review, their marriage meanders into tricky territory. She seeks solace in a feminist beach retreat with her children in tow, finding a kindred spirit in Guido’s gallery owner pal Helke (Martina Gedeck, Night Train to Lisbon). He, despite frequently cavorting with his models, can’t cope with Serena’s awakening into newfound independence.
When asked about his art, Guido answers that he is driven by passion, as is the entirety of Luchetti’s film. His protagonists are fervent in their feelings about each other, just as the filmmaker is zealous about depicting the strength of their ties for better and for worse. Family is a bond that can’t be broken, he posits, even when trying to balance competing notions of freedom and security in a climate rife with experimentation. There are no right or wrong answers offered to the troubles faced by a woman seeking her own identity, a man coping with his dreams deviating from his reality, and children unable to intervene, other than reiterating the permanence of their connection.
Framing the drama through looking back rather than moving forward allows for light-heartedness to prevail, as perhaps best enacted by the film’s cast. Rossi Stuart and Ramazzotti never dial down the strength of their characters’ actions and reactions, nor do they surrender to melodrama, remaining communicative of, yet undefeated by, the mounting woes. Garofalo and Calvagna aren’t called upon to do much more than personify the feature’s perspective, but aptly show the responses children have to their parents’ problems. Subtlety isn’t the film’s strongpoint, but expression is, showing the intertwining of sweetness and sorrow in both the lowest and highest of moments.
The prevailing golden hue wraps up all of the feature’s ups and downs in a period-appropriate package, Luchetti’s nostalgic directorial style showing the same affection as his earnest writing. Indeed, Those Happy Years dreamily drifts through encounters both cathartic and confrontational, observing but never judging, reinforcing the impassioned atmosphere. As a youthful, fantastical remembrance of what are now considered halcyon days, buoyancy reigns, though as a chronicle of change, the air of the bittersweet rears its head. As a filmmaker’s love letter to his formative experience, Those Happy Years is a heated and heartfelt swell of emotion, enthusiasm and empathy.
Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars
Those Happy Years (Anni felici)
Director: Daniele Luchetti
Italy, 2013, 106 mins
Italian Film Festival 2014
www.italianfilmfestival.com.au
Melbourne: 17 September – 12 October
Sydney: 18 September – 12 October
Canberra: 23 September – 15 October
Perth: 24 September – 15 October
Brisbane: 1 – 22 October
Adelaide: 2 – 22 October
Byron Bay: 9 – 15 October
Hobart: 16 – 22 October
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