In a small nondescript Italian town, brothers Manrico (Riccardo Scarmaccio) and Accio, (Elio Germano) bicker and battle their way through the 1960’s and early 1970’s trying to find their way in a quickly changing world. The former, older, beloved by the pair’s mother, charismatic, handsome, unafraid to speak his mind, joins the local Communist Party and quickly becomes one of their more prominent spokesmen. The latter, younger, more rebellious, full of vim and vinegar, goes against his family’s wishes and becomes a prominent card-carrying member of the Fascists.

Elio Germano and Riccardo Scarmaccio in ThinkFilms' My Brother is an Only Child

As the years roll by the pair continue their ideological (and sometimes physical) battle, their obvious love for one another not diluting the viscerally growing animosity brewing between them over their philosophical differences. Further escalating the acrimony, Accio comes to the startling revelation that he is in fact in love with his older brother’s sexy fellow Communist girlfriend Francesca (Diane Fleri). But blood is thicker than mutual self-loathing and simmering ideological hatred, and with the passing of time the festering wounds threatening to separate one man from the other might be the very things which bring them back together.

There is the definite possibility that I either need to be Italian or at least have paid better attention in my European World History classes in High School and College to appreciate director Daniele Luchetti’s My Brother is an Only Child (Mio fratello è figlio unico). Based on the book by Antonio Pennacchi, and working from a screenplay co-written by The Best of Youth scribes Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, this is handsomely mounted production crafted with an eye for detail and nuance I nonetheless found pretty much unbearable. A hit in its native country, it just didn’t translate for me, and sitting there taking it in I was absolutely dumbstruck who in their right mind would actually want to sit through the darn thing.

It all starts with Accio. He’s the one we follow for the majority of the picture, the character in just about every scene of the film, and he’s wholly unlikable. His name means “bully,” and goodness knows he holds to that definition. He is physically, verbally and socially abusive, and more he is this way for no particular reason other than to hold true to some sort of internal self-stylized need for rebelliousness. There is no shading to this man, no character development shedding light on the way he acts or why, somewhere towards the end of second act, he begins to slowly change his ways.

Part of me feels this must have something to do with the vagaries of youth, about the directionless malaise adolescence and young adulthood can bring about. But why, then, does his family continually treat the kid as such a perpetual failure when they constantly refuse to let him even ponder the idea of chasing his dreams? Why does he fall so easily for another man’s glowing stories of the Fascist glory days when the stories amount to much ado about virtually nothing (at least as to how they’re expressed here)?

I don’t know, and those are just two of the myriad of questions at the tip of this particular picture’s proverbial iceberg. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why people did what they did here, the choices they were making so nonsensical and alien all I could really do was scratch my head and guess. While I get there are probably culture and historical barriers I’m just not grasping, a good film is still able to transcend those obstacles and become something universal and that’s unfortunately just a trait outside of this project’s grasp. 

On the plus side, the movie looks incredible and feels 100-percent authentic. The world Luchetti has crafted is one I believed right from the very first frame, certain scenes and moments coming electrically alive to the point I couldn’t help but wonder why so much of the rest couldn’t do the same. All of which can’t help but be something of a minor shame, My Brother is an Only Child a difficult and frustrating drama that left any possibility of my enjoyment an orphan struggling against an overwhelmingly infuriating tide.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)

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-  My Brother is an Only Child Theatrical Trailer