The First Beautiful Thing (2010)

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Confusing, unable to follow the plot, too many people pop in and out....yes, exactly like a child feels watching a world he or she barely understands. This is not to everyone's taste, as a matter of fact the people who saw this with me at the local college mostly didn't get it, couldn't make sense of who the people are-and the early character transition between the child who sees his mother win the prize of most sexy mom to the professor who needed constant drugs to ease his adult existential pain was not clear. So, for those who have the good fortune to see the film, read the synopsis first, but don't worry about all the people who pop in and out.There is a boy and his little sister, first seen when his mother is thrown out of the apartment by their violent father. But they had each other, even though he called her "dummy" it was with love, something that sustained her even in the flash forward when the mother was dying, but even in her last days the mother never lost a joi de vive that was always a part of her, never knowing how it hurt her son so deeply.This may be representative of Italian films, Italian culture, where there is a vitality, from the pinching of a sexy women's ass to laughing in the face of terminal illness, that is strange to American viewers. But oh what a relief to see it represented so beautifully in all its sensuous chaos.

Although the golden age of Italian cinema probably stopped a couple of decades ago after a formidable run beginning with the neo-realist movement, Paolo Virzi's The First Beautiful Thing captures some of the realism and confusion of life in the 1970's through present day. Propelled by several sometimes confusing flashbacks, it still makes sense when it focuses on mother and son and a tempestuous, oedipal string of lasting impressions.Anna (Michella Ramazzotti) is a beautiful mother, wife, and local hottie who wins the Summer Mother Beauty Contest of 1971, setting off a series of jealousies (even her young son), and infidelities, as befitting the not quite stereotypical mother/whore motif. Son Bruno, played as an adult by Valerio Mastanrea, grows up to be a professor and a misanthropist whose recurring images of his chaotic mother disturb him and alienate him from his sister Valeria (Claudia Pandolfi) and his mother, played in her later years by Stephania Sandrelli.Bruno is more memorable than his mother because he is far more complicated, a drug addict who struggles to please his cancerous mother in her last days and reconcile with his sister. While Bruno's oedipal inclinations have not been overpowering, mother Anna has a couple of scenes where she treats him like a lover rather than a son. Regardless of those clues, it is not until they are permanently separated that he is free to swim with his girlfriend, seemingly washed of his mother and free to love.Compare this mother/whore story with the recent much more oblique I am Love or the more openly incestuous Murmur of the Heart, and you can see why it comes closer to telenovela than a classic, The Priest's Wife, in which Sophia Loren challenges a priest's vow of celibacy. Anna wrecks her children's lives, according to her son, but she has an aura of likability that begs the audience to care for her when she has mostly confused the lives of many men and children, too.Although the story lacks sophisticated dialogue and the plot is unnecessarily complex, the film is a moving treatise on the effects of absent mothers and estranged sons on family happiness.

Having just seen this movie I'd say that Virzì is seriously working on becoming a major director. His technique is steadily evolving, his stories becoming more and more complex yet intimate, digging in his own youth and background while finding his own voice and style. Not quite Fellini yet but he seems to have a penchant for rolling in wallowing, like the great master, in his own experiences, remembrances and fantasies. It's a great compliment to say no matter what confusion one might find in the plot, one cannot really stop watching it. And like a good book, once finished watching, one feels like going back an looking again at some pages to better savor them. I don't know if this was Oscar material (too intimate, and a bit difficult to read for a general audience) but surely a movie to watch again after a few days, like a good book to leaf through now and again. This is what French movie directors have been trying to convey at their best. Kudos to Virzì.

Paolo Virzi, the last heir of Italian comedy recounts the resentment of a child for a mother too generous, the ambitions of a great little woman in Italy in the sixties, the Italian province full of prejudices, the disease as an instrument of reconciliation. Between past and present, helped by a splendid cast including Stefania Sandrelli (muse of Pietro Germi and Bernardo Bertolucci, Ettore Scola return in a leading role with all his talent as an actress animal). Paolo Virzi signs his best movie, a film that makes you cry and laugh at the same time, a film that remains in the heart... Paolo Virzi, the last heir of Italian comedy recounts the resentment of a child for a mother too generous, the ambitions of a great little woman in Italy in the sixties, the Italian province full of prejudices, the disease as an instrument of reconciliation. Between past and present, helped by a splendid cast including Stefania Sandrelli (muse of Pietro Germi and Bernardo Bertolucci, Ettore Scola return in a leading role with all his talent as an actress animal). Paolo Virzi signs his best movie, a film that makes you cry and laugh at the same time, a film that remains in the heart...