A long, hot, Italian Summer (Part I)

Sooo, the blog has been quiet for a while…The English summer has been so sunny and warm I couldn’t bring myself to stay in the house, I just had to go outside in the streets…(Yes, I am being ironic). Anyway, what’s been going on in the Motherland over the past few months…? “Bad weeds never die” an Italian saying goes. Well, for once it wasn’t true. This summer Francesco Cossiga died. Not much different from a Tampax: he was always there when the bloodbaths happened, he’s been described by a blogger.

Mio fratello è figlio unico, (My brother is an only child), directed by Daniele Lucchetti, 2007

Where: Latina, a small town near Rome that was built  during Mussolini’s regime out of the Pontine Marshes.
When: the 60s and 70s, some of the most turbulent decades Italy has ever seen in the 20th century.
Who: two brothers from a working class family.

The elder, Manrico, is handsome, charismatic and adored by all. He becomes a militant of the local Communist party’s section. The younger, Accio, is more introverted, frustrated, angry. He ends up joining the local Fascist group, more in defiance of his brother and family than out of true conviction. The story of the two brothers becomes the story of the two “Italies”.