Based on a book, The Dinner by Dutch author Herman Koch, Ivano De Matteo’s I Nostri Ragazzi is one of the best films of 2014.
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With its cast to die for, Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessandro Gassman, Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Barbora Bobulova, Ivano De Matteo’s ‘I Nostri Ragazzi’, The Dinner screened at Venice as part of the Giornate Degli Autori or “Venice Days” section.
I was a big fan of Koch’s The Dinner, so I was surprised and delighted to find a movie that actually improved the book. In the book, a major part of the dialogue takes place over the course of one unpleasant evening, but De Matteo’s movie’s more natural plot progression and the changing settings in the movie are more natural and less claustrophobic. De Matteo ultimately “fixes” all the problems of the book, makes it more human and less excessively theatrical.
When two brothers, more for appearance sake than anything else, get together with wives that hate each other for a monthly dinner, it’s not fun for anybody but it’s just something one does. The monotony of the family tradition might have continued forever had it not been for something their kids got involved in, something worse than anyone could have expected.
Lo Cascio and Gassman are both delicate and powerful in their incredible multidimensional performances as the two brothers, and Mezzogiorno and Bubolova have never been better, authentic and mesmerizing as the women who will do anything to protect their families.
Beyond the film’s exploration of family relationships and troubled teenagers, there is the simple question of right and wrong and how it is never simple as it should be to answer. De Matteo’s done a fabulous job of giving us a window into this family’s emotionally charged situation.
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