Movie Review: The First Beautiful Thing
Italian director Paolo Virzi's family drama could well be called This Boy's Life with its focus on the relationship between a glamorous, feckless mother and her disenchanted son.
There are other family members whose lives are affected by the wayward behaviour of Micaela Ramazzotti's beautiful mother Anna, but it is Valerio Mastandrea's portrayal of the son Bruno as an adult that deserves most of our sympathy.
As a young boy, Bruno wears a permanent frown of reproach as his mother gathers men around her, drawn not only to her beauty but her complete lack of guile.
Bruno feels betrayed by his mother's behaviour and her mistreatment at the hands of her suitors, and takes this sense of unease and disengagement into his adult life, where his promise as a young poet translates only into a dull professorship at a trade school.
To dull the pain of life he indulges in drug-use, which only serves to alienate him from his girlfriend and his profession.
He is so disengaged from his childhood upbringing that he initially rebuffs his younger sister Valeria's attempts to bring him to the bedside of his dying mother in a hospice.
When he agrees to see his mother, he finds a woman who, though she may be dying, is still vibrant and attractive to men. The film shifts between Anna's early marriage and the flight from her husband to live with other men, dragging her children with her, to scenes of the dying woman. This is where the film starts to get the focus wrong, metaphorically speaking.
The older Anna looks nothing like her young self, and her dying behaviour is far feistier and more confident than the younger Anna.
That Stefania Sandrelli, who plays the older Anna, looks nothing like the actress playing the younger woman certainly does not help our sense of continuity.
It is just one of a number of false notes in this sprawling family saga. Towards the end, for instance, when the dying Anna decides to remarry, an illegitimate son from one of her numerous liaisons is unearthed, a startling discovery.
Keeping track of the liaisons and minor family members is difficult, to the point of confusion in some cases. The portrait of Anna's sister-in-law, who conspires with the aggrieved husband to snatch the children at one stage, is crudely drawn and far from convincing.
It is a pity the film goes off the rails because the early scenes are encouraging. We first see, in 1971, Anna as a beautiful young mother, selected as the winner of a cheesy beauty contest in the Tuscan port of Livorno, her son Bruno scowling at the public adulation of his mother. The film then deposits the viewer in Livorno 38 years later, where Bruno and his sister are forced to confront what has become of their lives.
The First Beautiful Thing is a story of how children can be damaged by the failures of their parents, and how reconciliation is the only way to heal the pain. This theme pulses fitfully throughout the film but there are too many other threads competing for attention to create a powerful and moving family drama. <div class="endnote">
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