Load of rubbish!!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

I watched "Ricordati di me" and it felt like a polite conversation that avoids self criticism and only accepts one's personal dreams and ambitions. A conversation that accomplishes nothing since the subconscious is too scared to embark on the dreams because there is no safety net. 'Remember Me, My Love,' as it is known in North America, is a great film that reveals the superficial mask of the family unit. It is the story of a family and its progressive loss of balance between the self and the public sphere of conventional happiness. This film begins beautifully with the personal woes of the family members and the audience can sense the inevitable tipping of the cauldron.The crossroads for most of the characters is based upon their personal potential and their own self-interests versus the ones created by their environments. For Carlo Ristuccia (played wonderfully by Fabrizio Bentivoglio), Giulia (another great performance by Laura Morante) and Alessia (played by the very talented Monica Belucci) the question at hand is based upon their waning existence. They all seem to feel lost and monotone while they struggle to feel the youthful sensation of bliss and love. The opening sequence is perfectly written and shot to portray the Ristuccias one dimensional life. The screenplay, subtle in its work, progressively displays the inevitable choices to be made by the members of the Ristuccia family.However, as the characters embark on their selfish adventures, they digress from their intentions and they seem to blindly be repeating their mistakes. Giulia attempts to reconcile her acting career yet fails to see the theme of the play as a reflection of her own state. Carlo, failing to write the last chapter of his novel, never completes his work because he is afraid to risk and lose. He, along with the rest of his family, tries to balance between the want and the need. A problem that is never realized - even in the end. "Remember Me, My Love" is a film that could have benefited from some slight editing, especially concerning Valentina's storyline, yet the end product leaves you feeling like the characters - a false sense of hope but a bigger sense of loss. This film strikes a reminiscent chord for its audience because it deals with loss - the loss of dreams, the loss of love - and its battle with throwing in the towel. None of the characters experience true happiness however they've convinced themselves at times. The first and final shot sum up the film beautifully as it questions the choices made by each of the man characters. It's all a facade, so enjoy the show.

"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)

Just like the director's previous effort _The Last Kiss_ this movie is about life. And no one brings more realism to his representations of the human condition than Muccino. There's pain and suffering, there's pleasures and elation, loss and gain, sadness and happiness but mostly a search to find ourselves in the time we have been given. Unlike one-dimensional American movies, Muccino's films show how with pleasure comes pain and that in pain are the seeds of pleasure. The acting is perfect. Bellucci looks gorgeous and so does Laura Morante. There is so much going on in this film that invariably, some story lines will be less interesting to some than others. This and _The Last Kiss_ are great celebrations of life.

Yesterday I saw this excellent movie, and it is still lingering in my brain and my soul.I merely liked, not loved, Gabriele Muccino's smash Italian hit L'Ultimo Bacio when I saw it, since its depiction of thirtysomething doubts and fears left a sort of slightly fake aftertaste in my mouth. Plus, it waned out of my mind in a couple of hours, even though I had enjoyed while I was in the theatre.Ricordati Di Me is a very, very different deal. It's a delicate, multi-faceted, true and touching punch in your stomach.Well written and well played - especially by the extremely skillful and absolutely charming Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who's one of Italy's most gifted thesps as well as the longtime boyfriend of Rain Man's Valeria Golino (here you see him pouring his heart out onscreen with painful, searing directness) - the movie brings you into the home of a dysfunctional Italian family not dissimilar from so many dysfunctional Italian families.Meet them: there is the melancholic, romantic, slightly frustrated husband Carlo (played by Bentivoglio), who's an obscure white-collar worker who once wanted to be a writer and keeps a sensitivity that leaves him totally exposed to raw emotions and to the eventual unfair blow of fate, all of this while keeping as well a still-unfinished novel in one of his drawers; then there is his VERY frustrated teacher wife (played by the ever-classy Laura Morante), who once wanted to be a stage actress. They've got two teenage kids, one of them a vain and egotistical 18-year-old daughter, keen on only one thing, i.e. becoming a TV starlet (played by stunning newcomer Nicoletta Romanoff), and the other one a vaguely leftish, pot-smoking daydreamer senior high schooler son (played by the director's brother).Nothing new or revolutionary here, be sure of that, but the whole tale elaborated by Gabriele Muccino about the emotional disintegration of this apparently average family is narrated with passion and participation, both by its writer-director and by the actors.The foursome meet enormous difficulties in communicating with each other - not only the parents with their children do, but also each of them with any other one, and egotism and indifference run rampant, especially in the veins of Valentina, the young daughter, who's a truly upsetting spectacle to watch, what with her relentless pursuing of a tinsel world, a world made of garish make-up, TV studios and squalid sex relationships with one or the other TV beefcake idol, since this girl, while still looking very innocent on the outside, would do anything to be cast in some cheesy TV show as one of the decorative babes who strut and grind in the background.So, when you see Carlo, the husband, falling again - after many years - for married and unsatisfied mother of two Alessia (the ever-stunning Monica Bellucci, here way more expressive and intense than usual), an old flame of his youth, you just cannot think, not even for a second, of him as a middle-aged philanderer, or of Alessia as your typical homewrecker. The rekindling of their love is something so pure, so tender, so NEEDED by both these characters, that you can't help rooting for them - and be heartbroken when things just become spinning in a totally unpredicted direction, which I don't want to spoil for you.I also truly appreciated the open ending, which leaves the audience enough room to imagine whatever they like for the future life of these characters, who've just been, anyway, through a journey able to break - once and for all - the walls of hypochrisy that previously surrounded them.Go and see this movie, you won't regret it.