Though it’s not nominated for many other awards, the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists‘s 2013 Silver Ribbon winner, the Nastro d’Argento for 2013 is the movie that, if I am to be honest, was my favorite of the year.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Io e Te is the story of a teenage boy on the fringe; his class is taking a ski trip, and his mother gives him the money to go and he tells her he’s going, but he pockets that money and spends the time in the basement of his family’s apartment building hiding out. Happy as a clam, he pictures himself with a week of no one bothering him and no forced, unwelcome interactions, that is until his half-sister shows up, strung out on heroin and looking for things to sell in her father’s basement.
Having premiered at Cannes, this movie was severely underrated by critics and at the box office, and so I was happy to see it recognized with the Silver Ribbon. The kids, their emotions, the basement, the vapid mother: all uncomfortably well drawn and heartbreaking. It would be creepy to call this a love story, but it is a story about love, and about empty lives that connect.
I Love Italian Everything 