Me and You

I like it. it is not a revelation/surprise/piece from Bertolucci chain. it is only a common story about family, about a meeting and refuges. and nothing more. a delicate picture about small significant things. interesting young actors and waters of a special atmosphere. realistic, gray, circle of nuances, seductive and almost real beautiful, it is a mixture of ordinary life crumbs and a strange poem. a teenager and his sister. dialogs, feelings, silences. and a Bertolucci after experiments, storms, scandal. because, after an extraordinary trip, it is time for reflection. a film like a box with surprises. first - Jacopo Olmo Antinori in a promising role. then - Tea Falco. so, it is not a bad idea to see it ! not for director or for cast. but for a meeting with art to transform in movie few common pieces from common life.

"I'm stepping through the door. And I'm floating in a most peculiar way. And the stars look very different today." – David Bowie, Space Oddity Coming of age can mean many things: sexual awakening, a religious or cultural ritual, or even achieving an academic or artistic goal. In Bernardo Bertolucci's intimate drama, Me and You, however, it is the time when a young man is able to see the world for the first time from a point of view other than his own and learns to give of himself to another human being. Based on a novel by Niccolò Ammaniti, the same author whose novel was the basis for Gabriele Salvatores' 2003 film I'm Not Scared, the film, Bertolucci's first since The Dreamers in 2003 and his first made in Italy in thirty years, is the story of Lorenzo, an isolated fourteen year old boy (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), and Olivia (Tea Falco), his older half-sister, a heroin addict, who inadvertently discover they need each other more than they ever thought possible.

The film opens in the office of a psychiatrist. The first image we see is Lorenzo bent over a chair, prominently displaying his huge mop of black hair while the therapist, confined to a wheelchair (as is Bertolucci), tries to find out what he means when he describes everything as "normal." We never find out what the issues are that led him to the doctor's office, but meeting his overbearing mother, Arianna (Sonia Bergamasco) in the following scene gives us a clue. After telling her at dinner in a restaurant that he wonders whether people are looking at them as lovers because of her youthful appearance, Lorenzo fantasizes out loud about having sex with his mama if they were the sole survivors of a holocaust and needed to repopulate the planet. Embarrassed, she tells him to be quiet but with sort of a glint in her eye.

"If it was a boy, what would you call him?" he asks her but does not get a response. Lorenzo is about to go on a ski trip with his school but it is obvious that he is not keen on the idea, especially when he sees his classmates socializing together outside of the bus. Demanding that his mother drop him off several blocks away so he won't be driving up with his "mommy," it seems as though he has already made up his mind not to go. Using the money given to him for his ski trip, Lorenzo buys enough provisions (including obvious product placements) for seven days.

Carefully avoiding being spotted by the building superintendent, he moves into the hot, crowded basement of his apartment house with his junk food, laptop, an ant farm he purchased for the occasion to keep him company, and a copy of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, translated into Italian. Lorenzo's peace and quiet is soon disturbed, however, when his half-sister Olivia, a former artist and photographer, shows up asking for a place to stay while she tries to kick her drug addiction "cold turkey" in preparation for meeting her lover in the country. Although the affection they first show each other would not make a very good love story, they gradually grow closer as he begins to move beyond his own concerns.

Lorenzo tries to help Olivia get through her heroin withdrawal symptoms, caring about her health while bringing her food and sleeping pills.Through their interaction, he seems to grow in self-confidence and peeks out of his shell to see that there is a world outside of his cocoon. Though there are painful moments, Me and You is not a dark film but one that is brightened by the potential of two damaged souls coming together and experiencing love. Olivia tells him that she is a Buddhist and that the reality is that they are one and only their point of view keeps them apart, a sentiment movingly apparent when they dance together to the David Bowie song Space Oddity, translated into an Italian version.

Me and You is a small film but a lovely one, without clichés or pretensions, a film that draws you into its characters and allows you to feel that you have made some good friends. Apropos of the film's title, Bertolucci takes us all the way from a "me or you" world to one that has a place for "me and you," one that is inclusive and filled with beauty, and in which we know that, for Lorenzo and Olivia, nothing will ever again be "normal."

The last one before is really cool, what a shame! What a stained-glass window staging, it speaks of spirals, love, addiction, sensitivity, dysfunction, brotherhood, all this group brought together with a touch of hysteria: sister, brother, half, tall, short, the director Bernardo Bertolucci, rise up and me, masterpiece after the fall, standing for ever.

Me and You (Io et Te): Bertolucci's last film, while it may seem insubstantial the touch of a master is still there. Most of the action occurs in a basement - an introverted 14 year old, Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) , pretends to go on a school ski trip but hides in his apartment building's cellar. Then his 25 year old half-sister Olivia (Tea Falco) arrives, having nowhere to stay, she doesn't get on with her stepmother. They hang out together in a storeroom containing the contents of the apartment's previous owner, a Russian Countess.Problems pile up as Olivia is a heroin addict trying to go cold turkey. A touching film which offers hop for the futures of both of the protagonists ( great performances by Falco and Antinori) but certain threats remain. Directed and Co-Written by Bernardo Bertolucci. 8/10.

Huh. I guess this is one of those films that I probably like more than a lot of others (at least those who have seen Me and You outside of the US, here it never got an official release after a very limited run in NYC in 2014 I missed). Bertolucci, in his mastery with an eye that feels alive without being outlandish, manages to convey that extremely intense, sometimes confused, always passionate, vulnerable, stupid, immature sense of one's self and the world around when one is at 14 years old.

Maybe it is just from my time as a dipshit loner 14 year old, certainly not always in agreement with my parental units, who felt most at peace - or actually in unrest but at least it can be an escape inside - witp rock music and a pair of headphones (I didnt have the ant-farm though, or the Armadillo, poor little guy hope he or she wad OK, I digress). Or maybe it's the honest, definitely uncomfortable, almost pathological depiction of a love-hate bond with a sibling who can seem so bright and wise one moment and is a furnace of bile the next (the addiction and withdrawal, like a quarter of this film is a young lady withdrawing cold turkey and Tea Falco is committed to a 1000% and God bless her for it).

The film is limited by being set largely in a basement, but again the camerawork is always curious and active and definitely on edge, like you can feel through the lens choices there's unbridled hormones and a love for 80s and 90s rock glowing through it all, and while I don't know if I'd call Olmo Antinori as profound a performer as Bertolucci has had in his career that's also a tall order to reach up to. For what he's asked to do here, which is to play an angry introvert who doesn't know what to do with himself and slowly comes out of his angst-addled and probably OCD packed shell, he commits to the bit and is compelling.

I can get why some seem to be annoyed by his acting (or in part the character himself) since he is yelling a lot and acting out, but I found a strange empathy with him despite (or partly because) of the small scale yet still extremes of the premise of the story; it's about being okay with the troubles that go through your mind every day, especially if it's not all that complicated (he seems to live a fairly decent middle class upbringing), and sometimes an outside perspective is the only way to change.

I don't know if Lorenzo changes by the time we get that 400 Blows inspired final freeze frame, though I don't think Bertolucci means to suggest he is in as much despair as Antoine Doinel. On the contrary, he seems to have more of a look like (can't believe this just popped in my head) Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2 at the end of the "Raindrops" montage. What will worry him now?

He's gone through a helluva week he didn't expect to have with his half sister - and for the record, no incest, in case you were wondering considering some of the director's past work (from Before the Revolution to the Dreamers), he and I assume the author of the book are after a more fundamental exploration of a sibling push and pull than that reduction - and he's come out the other end understanding himself better. Maybe. Or at least her. And that life is not going to get much easier so time to "grow up." If the film does get so anxious like its character a couple of times, it helps that it all comes together in the last twenty minutes or so.

Not a great final film, but a good one and I'm glad I finally got to see it and be one of maybe dozens I tell you dozens of voices that say it's worth a look, especially if you've gone so far into Bertolucci's body of work that just a couple of the obscurities are left. And now I'm in the mood for some Red Hot Chili Peppers!