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Me and You/Io e te

7/10

Stars: Jacopo Olmo Antinori, Tea Falco, Sonia Bergamasco, Veronica Lazar, Tommaso Ragno, Pippo Delbono

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Me and You is a slight but reasonably compelling two-hander about a quirky 14-year old boy who, facing difficult relationships with his parents and sent to a psychotherapist by his mother, decides to abandon a planned school skiing trip and instead hide out in the neglected basement of his home for a week. There he hopes to be able to come to terms with his conflicting psychological problems and emerge as a ‘normal’ teenager.

So far, so contrived. His plans to live in his head until he can face the world as a regular teenager fall apart with the arrival of his 25-year old half sister whose fragile state is potentiated by her addiction to drugs. Slowly and moderately fascinatingly, the two begin to bond…

Me and You is fortunate, perhaps, to be assured of keen critical interest, not essentially because of the reasonably compelling screenplay (Niccolo Ammaniti, Umberto Contarello, Francesca Marciano, Bernardo Bertolucci, based on the novel by Niccolo Ammaniti) but rather that it marks the return of Bertolucci some nine years after The Dreamers and now directing from a wheelchair. Bertolucci is a significant filmmaker and therefore his films enjoy a significance they don’t always deserve.

That said, Me and You boasts two strong central performances by Jacopo Olmo Antinori as the teenager and Tea Falco as his half-sister, who manage to say something about the confused and uncertain psyches of young people today.

In the final analysis, Me and You is not exactly vintage Bertolucci perhaps but an interesting and occasionally arresting comeback.

Alan Frank

USA 2013. UK Distributor: Artificial Eye. Colour.
96 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 2, Swearing 2.

Review date: 21 Apr 2013