Finally, America can see Ivano De Matteo’s movie version of Herman Koch’s best-selling book, The Dinner.
Screening RIGHT NOW in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center, other cities are coming soon and more dates are TBA. Click on the links for theater information and tickets.
August 7 Chicago, IL
Gene Siskel Film Center
August 21 San Francisco, CA
4 Star Theatre
August 28 Santa Fe, NM
The Screen
September 4 Miami, FL
Tower Theater
September 4 Buffalo, NY
The North Park Theatre
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 realistic and less claustrophobic.
With its cast to die for,Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessandro Gassman, Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Barbora Bobulova, I Nostri Ragazzi screened in the Giornate Degli Autori or “Venice Days” section.
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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