Title: Anni Felici (Those Happy Years)
Director: Daniele Luchetti
Starring: Kim Rossi Stuart, Micaela Ramazzotti, Martina Gedeck, Samuel Garofalo, Niccolò Calvagna.
Director Daniele Luchetti brings an autobiographical urgency to the story, by a narrator who watched his parents’ marriage unravel when he was a child.
Guido Marchetti (Kim Rossi Stuart) is an ambitious avant-garde artist in 1974 (the year of the Italian divorce referendum). He sculpts females in his Roman studio by pouring plaster over models’ naked bodies. His two sons, Dario (Samuel Garofalo) and little Paolo (Niccolò Calvagna), watch their father work as though it were the most normal profession in the world. Typical of the times, the boys call their parents by their first names. Their mother, Serena (Micaela Ramazzotti), is a pretty devoted housewife, until the feminist movement will stir in her the urge for emancipation and something more.
Given the fact that Luchetti’s father, sculptor Luca Luchetti, had a career similar to Guido’s, and that his artwork was used in the film, it’s hard not to associate Daniele Luchetti with the budding young filmmaker Dario Marchetti. As a matter of fact the original title of the movie should have been ‘Storia mitologica della mia famiglia’ (Mythological Story Of My Family), but in the making the title changed to ‘Anni Felici’ (Those Happy Years), making the bittersweet judgement prevail on the childhood remembrances.
Daniele Luchetti examines conventional and unconventional life choices of the freedom-seeking parents using ironic distance, accentuating the invisibility of the children when the couple discusses topics like betrayal, in their presence.
All in all, despite some moments of humour and great acting, the story doesn’t captivate nor create any empathy. It filters through as a concentration of wacky episodes that stereotypically represent the 70s. The moments during which the market and mechanism of art criticism are mocked are sourly amusing. But as they give way to a rhetorical happy ending, the tease gets nulled.
Regarding the technical aspects, it is worth praising the way Luchetti mixes 35mm lensing with the use of retro 16mm and Super 8 formats.
Technical: B-
Acting: B-
Story: C
Overall: C+
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
