11/10/2023 - Actor Claudio Bisio’s directorial debut tackles the subject of the Holocaust in a tragicomic key, but his good intentions fail to conceal his inexperience and aversion to reality

Carlotta De Leonardis, Alessio Di Domenicantonio and Vincenzo Sebastiani in L’ultima volta che siamo stati bambini

In his directorial debut, L’ultima volta che siamo stati bambini [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which hits Italian cinemas on 12 October, courtesy of Medusa Film, actor Claudio Bisio tackles the difficult subject of the Holocaust, recalling one of the most tragic episodes of the Second World War: the raid on the Jewish ghetto in Rome by the SS, in collaboration with the Fascist regime of the Italian Social Republic on 16 October 1943. Bisio has opted for a tragicomic key - as befits his role as a stand-up comedian, a TV comedian, and a comedy actor of screen and stage - in his adaptation of Fabio Bartolomei’s novel of the same name. The film’s similarity to Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning movie Life is Beautiful, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (awarded the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar) and Radu Mihăileanu’s Train of Life is obvious, but Bisio’s work doesn’t come close to these titles when it comes to the final product.

The film opens in the Nazi-occupied Italian capital, which is battered by Allied bombings and whose population is divided and hungry. Three young kids are playing together on the street: Cosimo (Alessio Di Domenicantonio) has a father who’s been interned for shouting “Mussolini is a sack of shit” and lives with his granddad (Antonello Fassari). Italo (Vincenzo Sebastiani) has a Fascist dad (played by Bisio himself in archetypal hierarch style) who belongs to the War Cabinet and is organising the raid of the city’s ghetto on the orders of a German general. Italo speaks in regime-approved slogans and lives in the shadow of his heroic militiaman brother Vittorio who has been wounded in battle (Federico Cesari). Without even realising it, he insults his friend Riccardo (Lorenzo McGovern Zaini), who comes from a Jewish family and is forced to wear the yellow star. The three boys are joined by entrepreneurial Vanda (Carlotta De Leonardis), who lives in an orphanage from which she frequently runs away, thanks to a hole in the perimeter wall. When Riccardo disappears, forced by Nazis to board a train, the other three set out on his trail with a view to setting him free, following the train tracks north. They, in turn, are followed by a limping Vittorio and a sister from the orphanage. (Marianna Fontana).

From this moment onwards, the film’s structure mimics that of Rob Reiner’s 1985 masterpiece Stand by Me, which is based on Stephen King’s story of a group of teens from various backgrounds setting out along train tracks in Oregon in search of a boy’s body and overcoming “initiatory” trials symbolising their coming of age. The same thing happens in L’ultima volta che siamo stati bambini (the title itself indicates the end of innocence in the face of horror), but with a light approach sliding towards inconsistency. In Stand by Me, the young, unknown boy’s body hovered like a ghost over these twelve-year-olds’ adventure, whereas here Bisio chooses to forget that which has been lost, as if he couldn’t really bring himself to recall the repressed genocide. The audience (which we imagine would comprise of 8 to 10-year-olds, tops) is treated to a series of funny gags, delivered by the likeable and spontaneous trio of newcomer actors, until the tragic ending, which peters out into a quick scene which feels like a bolt-on.

Overwhelmed by a relentless soundtrack (courtesy of Pivio and Aldo De Scalzi) composed of Fascist marches and Klezmer sounds, the film shows anonymous partisans killed and abandoned on the curb side, and good, handsome Fascists, when they’re not dummies misled by nasty Nazis. The nun’s hint at the Church remaining silent in the face of this extermination remains nothing more than a hint. In short, the director adopts an approach which is as least traumatic as possible, keeping reality out of the picture. The film’s humour seems disconnected from the subject and lacks the ferocious irony which makes us laugh at Hitler in Jojo Rabbit. Ultimately, the filmmaker’s good intentions can’t conceal his lack of directorial experience.

L’ultima volta che siamo stati bambini is produced by Solea, Bartlebyfilm and Rosebud Entertainment Pictures together with Medusa Film and Prime Video.

(Translated from Italian)