Those Happy Years' Is a Fantasy Well Worth Indulging - Sound on Sight 20/09/13 11:34

TIFF 2013: 'Those Happy Years' is a fantasy well worth indulging - Sound On Sight 20/09/13 11:34

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Those Happy Years Written by Daniele Luchetti, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli and Caterina Venturini Directed by Daniele Luchetti RECENT ARTICLES Italy/France, 2013 Spotlight Film Festivals In 2007, Daniele Luchetti garnered international attention with My Brother Is an Only Child, a nostalgic look at a pair of brothers in 1960s and 1970s Italy who find themselves on opposite sides of the political spectrum but loving the same woman. With Those Happy Years, Luchetti returns to the past once more, this time looking at TIFF 2013: 'Relax, I'm From The family dynamics with the backdrop of art rather than politics. Future' does a lot with little in a The film tells the story of artist and art teacher Guido (Kim Rossi Stuart), who is struggling both to gain the funny yet heartfelt sh… notoriety as an artist that he seeks and to provide for his wife Serena (Micaela Ramazzotti) and children Dario (Samuel Garofalo) and Paolo (Niccolo Calvagna). Serena, on the other hand, cares little for art and instead just Fantastic Fest 2013, Day One wants Guido to turn his attention to her. When a failed art installation causes Guido to further withdraw from his Report: 'Coherence' and 'On the family, Serena takes the children on a feminist retreat to a beach in France. Though at first reticent to let herself go, she enjoys the summer there immensely and learns more about herself than she thought she Job' would. Narrated by an adult Dario, the film takes a close look at family dynamics and the things that matter to us most. 'Prisoners' a well-acted, but overly grim and self-serious, procedural drama

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TIFF 2013: 'Those Happy Years' is a fantasy well worth indulging

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Those Happy Years might lack some of the substance of My Brother Is an Only Child but it clearly comes from 'Total War: Rome II' - Can An a very personal place, with Dario being an obvious stand-in for Luchetti himself; assuch, it rings true. Those Empire Be Built Upon Potential? Happy Years benefits especially from great performances from all members of the family (Garofalo and Calvagna are quite fun to watch as Guido and Serena’s precocious sons) and from Martina Gedeck as the family’s friend Helke, who becomes entangled in Guido and Serena’s relationship when she invites the latter to France. TIFF 2013: 'Heart of a Lion' insults with its blend of Those Happy Years functions well when it’s aware that, in many ways, it’s a bit of a fairy tale, as seen through the eyes of Dario. As he narrates that decisive summer in the development of his family, the adult Dario comes disparate approaches to Neo- to understand that he may be looking at this time in their lives with rose-tinted glasses. Most children whose Nazism parents are separated fantasize about happy times together as a family; Those Happy Years very much feels like such a fantasy, but with the added sobering wisdom that comes with growing up and understanding our TIFF 2013: 'Stranger by the Lake' parents as we become adults ourselves. In the end, this film is a fantasy well worth indulging. is erotic, tense, and surprisingly - Laura Holtebrinck moving

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, 2013. For a complete schedule of TIFF 2013: 'Honeymoon' films, screening times, and ticket information, please visit the official site. squanders an interesting premise

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Anni felici, Daniele Luchetti, Those Happy Years, TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival TIFF 2013: ‘Out’ manages to find the humour in a difficult situation without assigning By Laura Holtebrinck bla… Laura Holtebrinck has been known to think and talk and write about movies a lot. She recently graduated from the University of King's College in Halifax and has now returned to Wednesday Comedy Roundup: Toronto triumphantly. Eventually she hopes to get an MA in Film Studies and somehow turn It’s Always Sunny In her love of films into a career. For now she's just happy that someone would actually indulge Philadelphia 9.03, The League her ramblings on them. When she isn't writing for SoundonSight, she also contributes to Toronto Film 5.03 Scene. Her favourite films include 'A Hard Day's Night', 'Rushmore', 'Stand By Me', 'Psycho' and 'The Graduate'. She can also be found on twitter @djondabrinck The Bridge Ep 1.11 'Take the Ride, Pay the Toll" highlights View all Posts the show's strengths and weakn…

If you like what we do, please recommend or like us on Facebook . Survivor 27.1, “Blood is Thicker than Anything”: Family twists Share This Post pay off in weirdly satisfyi…

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http://www.soundonsight.org/tiff-2013-those-happy-years/?utm_s…feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+soundonsight%2FlUpk+(Sound+On+Sight) Page 4 sur 4 ‘Those Happy Years’ Review: Daniele Luchetti’s Latest 1970s Flashback | Variety 16/09/13 11:59

Toronto Film Review: ‘Those Happy Years’

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013 | 06:43PM PT Daniele Luchetti brings his usual mix of warmth, drama and boisterousness to this flashback to the roiling Italian 1970s of his youth.

Dennis Harvey (http://variety.com/author/dennis- harvey/)

Daniele Luchetti (http://variety.com/t/daniele-luchetti/)’s “Those Happy Years (http://variety.com/t/those-happy-years/)” is another flashback to the roiling Italian 1970s of his youth, though this time the family conflicts are more vulnerable to the vagaries of art than of political ideology. This enjoyable seriocomedy may not travel as far as his slightly more substantial 2007 drama, “My Brother is an Only Child,” but it showcases the director/co-writer’s usual mix of http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/those-happy-years-review-toronto-1200612797/ Page 1 sur 3 ‘Those Happy Years’ Review: Daniele Luchetti’s Latest 1970s Flashback | Variety 16/09/13 11:59 warmth, drama and boisterousness to pleasing effect. Further fest exposure and select offshore theatrical/home format sales beckon.

Narrated by the helmer’s child stand-in, Dario, as a reminiscing adult (voiced by Luchetti himself), the film has lanky Kim Rossi Stuart as Guido, a Roman sculptor and art teacher trying to get his creative reputation off the ground. He struggles to support his two young sons, Dario (Samuel Garofalo) and Paolo (Niccolo Calvagna), and his wife, Serena (Micaela Ramazzotti). Serena was raised under comparatively wealthy, stable circumstances but doesn’t care about money, or even art (which she professes generally not to understand). Instead, she’s devoted her loyalty entirely to Guido and the kids, though she’s impatient with her husband’s tortured-artist preoccupations and frequently suspicious that he’s cheating on her with all the nude young female models forever hanging around his studio.

When Guido’s contribution to an important Milan group show is trashed by a leading critic, he withdraws further into himself, and needy Serena is at a loss as to how to regain his attention. Figuring that making herself unavailable for a while might do the trick, she accepts an offer from his gallery owner friend Helke (Martina Gedeck) to take the kids on a sojourn to a feminist retreat on a beach in France. Despite initial skittishness — far from desiring “liberation” from her husband, Serena would like them to be joined at the hip — she and the boys end up thoroughly enjoying themselves. More surprisingly, Serena finds herself welcoming romantic overtures from Heike that had completely flown over her head until now.

Needless to say, the discovery of his wife’s serious emotional/sexual attachment to another woman isn’t taken well by Guido, never mind that he has, indeed, been fooling around with those naked college students all along. Deeply in love but unable to accept their separate evolution as individuals, husband and wife will illustrate the joys and pitfalls of the sexual revolution for their precocious, adaptable offspring. Luchetti’s penchant for broad strokes doesn’t necessarily evoke an era of complicated social change with great nuance, but his affection for his http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/those-happy-years-review-toronto-1200612797/ Page 2 sur 3 ‘Those Happy Years’ Review: Daniele Luchetti’s Latest 1970s Flashback | Variety 16/09/13 11:59 characters and their foibles lends “Those Happy Years” a generosity of spirit even when it risks superficiality and contrivance.

Performances are appealing, although the kids are overly wised-up in cutesy movie fashion. Pro production package could have used a more distinctive visual style, despite efforts at heightening period ambience not only though 35mm lensing but also use of retro 16mm and Super 8 formats.

Toronto Film Review: 'Those Happy Years' Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 8, 2013. Running time: 106 MIN. Original title: "Anni felici"

Production (Italy) A Cattleya and Rai Cinema presentation. (International sales: Celluloid Dreams, Paris.) Produced by Riccardo Tozzi, Giovanni Stabilini, Marco Chimez. Executive producer, Gina Gardini.

Crew Directed by Daniele Luchetti. Screenplay, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, Caterina Venturini, Luchetti. Camera (color, 35mm/16mm/Super 8), Claudio Collepiccolo; editors, Mirco Garrone, Francesco Garrone; music, Franco Piersanti; production designer, Giancarlo Basili; costume designer, Maria Rita Barbera; sound (Dolby Digital), Maurizio Argentieri; assistant director/casting, Gianni Costantino.

With Kim Rossi Stuart, Micaela Ramazzotti, Martina Gedeck, Samuel Garofalo, Niccolo Calvagna, Benedetta Buccellato, Pia Engleberth. (Italian, English, French dialogue)

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Source URL: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/happy-years-anni-felici-toronto-630441

Those Happy Years (Anni Felici): Toronto Review

1:05 PM PDT 9/17/2013 by Deborah Young

2 10 0

The Bottom Line

Using ironic distance, Daniele Luchetti examines conventional and unconventional life choices, in the story of a marriage seen through the eyes of a budding young ﬁlmmaker.

Venue

Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation)

Cast

Kim Rossi Stuart, Micaela Ramazzotti, Martina Gedeck

Director

Daniele Luchetti

Screenwriters

Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, Caterina Venturini, Daniele Luchetti Italian director Daniele Luchetti's personal work follows Kim Rossi Stuart and Micaela Ramazzotti as a married couple living through the freedom-seeking 1970s.

A delicate, nuanced ﬁlm that is unexpectedly moving in its portrait of a young Italian

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family living through the turbulent, freedom-loving '70s, Those Happy Years uses ironic distance to talk about very intimate things. Director Daniele Luchetti (My Brother Is an Only Child) brings a personal, even autobiographical urgency to the story, coolly told in hindsight by a narrator who watched his parentsʼ marriage unravel when he was a child. It captures the excruciating honesty and soul-searching of the years of feminism and self-liberation, a time that now seems far, far away. For this reason, it should evoke a lot of bittersweet memories in older viewers who will appreciate its light touch, along with fans of Italian stars Kim Rossi Stuart and Micaela Ramazzotti, both at the top of their game here.

Guido Marchetti (Rossi Stuart) is an ambitious but still unknown avant-garde artist in 1974, when things were considerably groovier than today. He sculpts female nudes in his Roman studio by pouring plaster over modelsʼ naked bodies. His two sons, Dario (Samuel Garofalo) and little Paolo (Niccolo Calvagna), watch their father work as though it were the most normal profession in the world. Theyʼre only kicked out when Dad needs a private session with his models, while the artwork is drying.

Typical of the times, the boys call their parents by their first names. Their mother, Serena (Ramazzotti), is a pretty, curly-haired housewife who doesnʼt understand the first thing about modern art, but understands all too well what her good-looking spouse is up to. Their fights usually end happily in the bedroom, as the boys look on. One of the clever things about the film is the way the kids are treated as if theyʼre invisible, making them privy to everything their parents do and feel and allowing Dario to be a privileged narrator.

Though at first Serena seems like just another jealous, slightly dippy housewife, Luchetti deftly turns that impression around in an early scene about performance art. Throughout the film, conventional academic art is challenged by the new avant-garde; Guido belongs to the latter school. His foreign gallery owner, Helke (Martina Gedeck of The Lives of Others), gets him a shot at the big time: an important group show in Milan. Though he orders Serena to stay home, she turns up with the kids anyway. In a beautifully imagined and filmed sequence artfully balanced between humor and embarrassment, Guido walks into the gallery stark naked with four of his models, who proceed to paint his body while an assistant challenges the squirming, well-dressed crowd of critics and spectators to take off their clothes. From the back of the room, Serena and the kids look on bug-eyed. Her spontaneous reaction is a touching expression of her naivete about modern art, as well testimony to the love, trust and admiration she bears her husband.

Thanks to Serena, the critics pan the performance as “fake”.

But the film audience, at least, is now firmly on her side, and Guido and his artistic male ego drop away as the screenplay unexpectedly shifts its attention to her. Serena has always accepted Guidoʼs unliberated attitude that a wife should stay home and care for her family, but now something changes inside her. Had it not been for her wonderful openness in the Milan scene, it would be impossible to believe she could go so far so fast in taking ownership of her feelings and rights as a woman. In the short space of a summer, under the playfully watchful eye of Darioʼs new 8mm film camera, Serena puts aside her doubts and heads off to a feminist retreat in France with Helke and the kids in tow. There, as the expression goes, she learns a lot about herself. When she returns to Rome, her marriage to Guido will never be the same.

Thereʼs something heart-wrenching about the tone of the screenplay, co-authored by the director with top screenwriters Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, both of whom worked on My Brother Is an Only Child. Given the fact that Luchettiʼs father,

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sculptor Luca Luchetti, had a career similar to Guidoʼs, and that his artwork was used in the film, itʼs hard not to associate Daniele Luchetti with the eager young filmmaker Dario Marchetti. In any case, the storyʼs warm, affectionate tone will make the audience agree with Darioʼs reflection that, despite all the chaos and painful moments in his youth, in retrospect they were the “happy years.”

Rossi Stuart is wholly believable as the angry, self-absorbed artist, the product of a mother who never stops cutting him down, even as an adult. But Ramazzotti steals the spotlight from him with her engaging pout and sudden courage to defy her big, warm family of shopkeepers and follow her own path. The performances are underlined by very delicate and illuminating mood music from composer Franco Piersanti.

A disclaimer: Luchetti presents what must be one of the most glowing portraits on ﬁlm of an art critic: one who not only forgives a punch in the face for a negative review, but nobly offers sage words of advice and a pat on the back when the same artist changes register and starts producing good work. Itʼs one of the ﬁlmʼs little surprises.

Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation), Sept. 13, 2013

Cast: Kim Rossi Stuart, Micaela Ramazzotti, Martina Gedeck

Production companies: Cattleya, Rai Cinema

Director: Daniele Luchetti

Screenwriters: Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, Caterina Venturini, Daniele Luchetti

Producers: Giovanni Stabilini, Riccardo Tozzi, Marco Chimenz

Executive producer: Matteo De Laurentiis

Director of photography: Claudio Collepiccolo

Production designer: Giancarlo Basili

Music: Franco Piersanti

Editors: Mirco Garrone, Francesco Garrone

Sales: Celluloid Dreams

No rating, 105 minutes.

Links: [1] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/around-block-toronto-review-629627 [2] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/mission-congo-toronto-review-629918 [3] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/how-strange-be-named-federico-629440 [4] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/jews-were-funny-toronto-review-629898 [5] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/break-loose-vosmerka-toronto-review-629603

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