Remember Me, My Love (2003)

Let's be realistic.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Blistering performances.

"La" Bellucci being Italian and famous, she features in Italian productions that can reach my french pastures, so I can keep in touch with this cool country: Italia has everything ready to make people enjoy life: clothes, music, pasta,.. Maybe that's why Italians are said to be smiling French, and French sad Italians! What is also striking after watching Italian TV is that the ordinary people has more weight there than in France where they turn invisible in front of the "People"! So, it isn't a surprise that this movie is about an ordinary family, except that every member seems very unhappy and broken. It's always paradoxical for me because it doesn't suppose to be like this: Married with children, it is all that it takes to have a perfect life! I'm single and I know the sadness to lead a lonely life.At the end, they gather themselves together and are closer than ever! In between, they face their private dragons, their biggest tragedies, they are at each other's throats. For more than 20 minutes, the atmosphere is very heavy, with cries, shoots, slaps… So, they learn to survive and forgive! So, just watch this movie and I'm sure you will say, as me, I will remember it!

There's a strange sort of paradox at work in "Remember Me, My Love," an Italian film that seems to be operating under some bizarre inverse law of quantum physics. For while the movie itself moves at a breakneck pace, hurtling from one scene to another with near-reckless abandon, we can't help noticing that the faster it goes, the slower it seems. Perhaps, we simply wear ourselves out trying to keep up with it and it is this exhaustion factor that ultimately accounts for our restlessness and ennui."Remember Me, My Love" focuses on a family of four, whose members haven't been getting along too well of late. The parents, Carlo and Giulia, are both trying to find ways to cope with a bad case of middle aged crisis: he, by rekindling a romance with a beautiful former flame, and she, by pursuing the career in acting she abandoned when she became a wife and mother. Their children, Valentina and Paolo, are typical adolescents, all caught up in rebellion, identity crises and complicated affairs of the heart.Although the film attempts to provide some insight into the complexities of modern family life, the characters come across as so whiny and self-indulgent that any sympathy they might have engendered on the part of the audience quickly turns to indifference and even irritation. The actors do their best (particularly Laura Morante as Giulia), but the characters they are called on to play never engage us much beyond the surface level. This lack of depth is further compounded by the whirlwind nature of the storytelling, which rarely allows the actors the time they need to settle down and work out the subtle nuances of their roles.In all fairness, I must admit that, in the second hour, the film improves considerably, trafficking in some genuinely raw emotions that exemplify the devastating effects that a disintegrating marriage can have on all members of a family. Moreover, the film ends on a courageously inconclusive note, which goes a long way towards mitigating some of the theatricality and artificiality that permeate the rest of the movie.Taken as a whole, "Remember Me, My Love" turns out to be much less than the sum of its parts, but the performances and a few good scenes do make it palatable.

RECORDATI DI ME is a beautifully written and constructed film by Italian director Gabriele Muccino about the workings of a 'normal middle class' family and the bonds and challenges that peak at the time of fragmentation of the family unit that accompanies 1) middle age of the parents and 2) departure of the children at the end of high school. How those crises and adjustments inform the durability of the family unit makes up this thoroughly engrossing and touching film.Carlo Ristuccia (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) is the father embedded in a life long job that is mundane and not at all in line with his dreams of being a writer (he has been writing a novel for years, yet unfinished). His wife Giulia (Laura Morante) is a committed mother but longs to return to the acting stage she abandoned for marriage. Their two children are Valentina (Nicolette Romanoff) who is determined to become a glamorous TV star and Paolo (Silvio Muccino) who is aimless in his desire for a life of meaning, a life which would prove he is not as unexceptional as he views himself.Gradually each member of the family encounters escape routes: Carlo meets his old girlfriend Alessia (Monica Bellucci) and begins an affair with her; Giulia is asked to audition for a part in a play directed by one Alfredo (Gabriele Lavia) who makes her feel desirable and noticed; Valentina sleeps around to land a part in a TV giveaway show 'Ali Babbi', and Paolo attempts to attach himself to a girlfriend by planning a birthday party with contraband hashish which he feels will make him appear important in the eyes of his peers. As each of these crises reaches a peek, Carlo sustains a back injury while fleeing his home and his resultant hospitalization results in altered perceptions of what the family is all about.The twists and turns of the plot are, of course, far more involved than this short synopsis, and it is the development of each of these characters and the way that they approach change that makes the film work so well.The acting is excellent and the direction is past paced even for a two and a half hour movie. Yes, much of this has been said before, but the wit and pathos combine to create a story well worth telling and watching. It is a story about dreams, lost possibilities, and the need to fulfill them.

"Remember Me, My Love" takes a long, hard, cold look at a somewhat decadent Italian bourgeois family of two midlife parents and two old teen kids as it examines their lives and loves with a distinct absence of the heart we've come to expect from Italian cinema. A technically excellent film with fodder for voyeurism where the story should be, this flick shows us the father as he falls for an old girlfriend, the mother as she tries to breath life into an acting career, the daughter who's sleeping her way into a two-bit showgirl slot, and a son who's just vying for the attention of a girl while smoking hash and partying. "Remember Me, My Love", which would have us believe everyone in Italy is beautiful, is a very good looking, always busy, too long, and less than satisfying watch with rapid dialogue and white subtitles which are difficult to read on light backgrounds making it a bit of a grind. (B)