I enjoyed this movie so much --I just saw it-- that I don't know where to start with my comment. Let's see, Italy --Tuscany-- very bright summer time, lots of green acres as far as the farthest horizon --the greenest of the greens-- flowers, lots of them and very colorful, the bluest possible sky, cloudless, the sea, with a rocky beach, the chirping of myriad birds in the background covered by more greenery.
What else..., beautiful young people, girls and boys --in Italy you can call a boy Bello (beautiful) and nobody will bat an eyelash, because if he's beautiful there's no hypocrisy about it, he's beautiful, period.
Anna (Kasia Smutniak) is so gorgeous, that when she's on the screen you don't see anything else --and she's plenty on the screen-- with a charisma quite difficult to surpass. As a matter of fact all the other girls, also quite beautiful, are painfully envious of her allure.
The villa, without being a luxurious one --is cozy, like an old family home, but that's the idea anyway-- is so paradisaical that one longs to enter the movie and inhabit the place for ever, away from the noisy world. Splendid vintage sport cars from the sixties. In this stunning place, Giulio (Giancarlo Giannini) recounts to us his life (he's now in his sixties) off camera and on, with long flashbacks where we see him as a young eighteen year old adolescent (Nicolas Vaporidis) and specially when he's off camera and we listen to his voice, we realize that he must have one of the most beautiful male voices we have ever heard.
Italy in the mid forties, when communists where so present in it's daily life, after the Second World War. Angela Finocchiaro (Pietra, Giulio's mother when young) is such a terrific actress!! she conveys all sorts of feelings just with a body posture, with a hand gesture, fantastic!
The movie is all about a first love, illusions, desires, the first kiss, the first sexual encounter, frustrations, disappointments, comings and goings. The transition between past (Giulio's memories) and the present is smoothly accomplished with expert editing in a way that makes you feel the nostalgia Giulio is experiencing with his remembrance of those bygone days.
An excellent decision of never showing Anna in the present leaves her in our mind lingering with her radiant beauty of her magnificent twenty years of youth.
I don't get it why there are no comments previous to mine.
I think it's a delightful movie that will leave you with a delicious feeling --it's a very light comedy-- specially because there are no horrendous decapitations, throat slicing, Hara-Kiri or impressive car explosions while somebody runs around like a human torch screaming like hell.
Very pleasant movie, a reunion of average people in average days, doing what everybody does within a regular family. The end is so nicely thought out as a final knot for the story that maybe, because unexpected, is the seal that leaves the imprint of pleasantness to the whole experience.
It also helps a lot the old fashioned 60s pop Italian songs that accompany the scenes of young Giulio.
My warning for 'spoiler' only was set for the viewer that will see this movie hoping to see some rape scene or blood pouring out of the screen into his living room, because in that case he'll be terribly disappointed.
