The Way We Laughed

Watching this film by Gianni Amelio is rather like reading a novel from which every other chapter has been excised. The narrative focuses on two orphan Sicilian brothers who emigrate to Turin in 1958. Young Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida) fools working class laborer Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso)--who will do anything to support his sibling--into believing that he's studying to become a teacher while he's actually living the life of a dreamy slacker. By dramatizing a single day in each of the succeeding six years, the story portrays their transformation over time, with Giovanni becoming a labor boss and Pietro (successively) a dropout, an eager graduate, and a haggard reformatory inmate. The overarching idea is that while initially Giovanni sacrifices everything for Pietro, by the end Pietro has made the ultimate sacrifice for his older brother. But because we're merely given snapshots of the changes rather than shown the causes, the picture resembles a connect-the-dots puzzle without enough dots, and neither Lo Verso, with his exaggerated gestures, nor the blankly inexpressive Giuffrida makes up for the lapses in the script. Visually elegant, The Way We Laughed--stiffly acted and funereally paced--winds up being a beautiful but empty exercise. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)