"1981" is director Ricardo Trogi's 1st installment of an autobiographical trilogy "1981, 1987, 1991" ambitiously filmed over a 10-year span using the same actors. That alone makes the trilogy monumental, as we see him and his family literally growing up across a decade. Here we have Trogi (narrating the story himself) depicted as an 11-year old boy who has just moved to a new town and seizes upon the opportunity as the mysterious newcomer to fabricate a lie-laden identity for himself. As you might guess, this frequently gets him into deep trouble.
But what's really interesting about this presentation is that our protagonist is so oddly amoral, even though he's a cute kid who's mostly harmless. When he gets caught in a lie, instead of coming clean and atoning for his sins he digs a deeper lie, as if that's what you're supposed to do. Thus this becomes a really funny, quirky sort of dark comedy that explores the origins of an innocently "criminal mind" (check out the follow up film "1987" to see where he is 6 years later).
There's also a strong yet subtle current of deep sentimentality that we witness mostly in the interaction between the boy and his father. The father, like his son, is very intelligent but not necessarily educated. So there's almost a peer-to-peer relationship in their banter, although the father always manages to outwit the kid.
The presentation is snappy, vivid and quirky, a lot like the style & pace of "Amélie" with frequent dives into fantasy sequences, such as the boy imagining a strange Nazi commander whom he must outwit. Other scenes become lucid, poetic & nostalgic, as in the interactions he has with other kids at school that feel like something out of "Stand By Me". But this flick is a true original. Along with its follow ups 1987 & 1991, this work presents one of the best portraits of Gen X growing pains ever put to film.
