(:)(:)(:) for My Brother is an Only Child, an Italian film, 2007, on Netflix DVD. Despite charming beautiful actors and an engaging plot line (two 1960s era brothers in southern Italy love to hate and hate to love each other as one is a fascist and one is a communist), this film falls short.
I'm in a phase right now where I'm letting my husband's Netflix queue introduce me to a number of foreign films that he has researched and been interested in seeing--he thinks this one entered the list circa 2007 and has only just now wormed its way to the top. This results in zero expectations--my brother's what? what's it called again? what country is it from? -- but also a high level of hit or miss-ness. I don't like mainstream Hollywood that much any more (with exceptions) and find that I really do enjoy foreign language films (for one thing the need to read subtitles force me to set down my laptop and actually pay attention to the movie) but I'm actually beginning to believe that foreigners have a higher tolerance for nothing happening than this slighly ADD American.
This is like the 3rd movie in a row we've seen with good actors, good writing, nice setting and cinematography but where relatively little happens. Actually, this one had the closest to a plot of the latter bunch. I think that non-Americans have a much higher tolerance for unhappy endings and not tying up loose ends.
This one could be seen just to watch the hunky Italian boys kiss and moon over gorgeous Italian girls. Special bonus points for the scene with an all-Communist orchestra rendition of Beethoven's Ode to Joy with special new "red" lyrics.
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