The Best of Youth (La Meglio gioventù, 2003)

Starring Alessio Boni, Luigi Lo Cascio

Written by Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli

Directed by Marco Tullio Giordana

It's hard to talk about this great work without spoiling it, but I'll try.

The six hours, and thirty-seven years, of The Best of Youth begin in Rome 1966, when brothers Matteo (Alessio Boni) and Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio) Carati sit their college exams and prepare to head north with friends for a long holiday. Matteo is studying literature, while Nicola is training in medicine. The nature of their adventure changes when Matteo discovers that Giorgia (Jasmine Trinca), a patient at the mental institution he volunteers at, is receiving electroshock treatments. Matteo decides that he has to get her out of there.

Giorgia is sentimentalised, but that's the way the brothers see her -- a vulnerable and of course beautiful young woman. For inexperienced young men of deep feeling, a woman who's so damaged that she can't walk through the city alone, so needy, is as attractive as they come. Trinca, who played the daughter in The Son's Room, manages to generally decrease in radiance as her character's arc progresses, reflecting the brothers' more realistic view of her. She changes, and though she never acquires the depths of the brothers, as the movie progressed I missed her more than anyone else when she was offscreen, inexperienced youngster that I am.

Boni initially plays Matteo as a poetic, but it doesn't take long before he reveals a troubled side, starting an unnecessary argument with his examiner and risking his academic future. His rebellion, coupled with the sense that he's vulnerable to cracking himself, makes you feel uneasy for his future. What quickly becomes heartbreaking about Matteo is that despite his sensitivity, he can't readily connect with other people. There's one scene where he unintentionally enrages Giorgia and can't calm her down; she storms outside, and while Nicola comforts her, Matteo is left standing back, helpless, useless.

That scene is Lo Cascio's finest, and his incredibly sympathetic performance (for the most part -- his character ages past the maximum age he can credibly portray) grows into one of the best of recent years. He's working with great material, but even given this, he projects almost too much understanding, so that he has to scale this back later in the movie to avoid making his life too perfect. He presents the best of youth, with the optimism and go-for-broke attitude this entails, but it's only the first quarter of the movie: youth must end, and it may not end happily.

Only at the very end of the movie does the plot feel like it's just playing out, and by then you'll have grown so accustomed to the characters that you won't mind so much. Striking scenes -- a Coppola-style (if not -sized) wedding, a tense holiday party -- draw us deeper into the characters as they leave and re-enter the story. Maybe romance, and romanticism, should last a lifetime. But if not, better to get on with changing the world.

A PLUS