In the press notes for Me and You (Io e Te) director and co-writer Bernardo Bertolucci says that since coming to terms with the fact he will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to make another film. Serving as his first in nine years, and reading between the lines, Me and You plays like a film from a director merely trying to figure out if he can still do it. As such, he’s managed to prove he can still make a film, but not a very compelling film.
Me and You is based on the novel by Niccolo Ammaniti, centering on Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), a 14-year-old outsider who skips out on a school field trip to live in the basement of his apartment building for a week to get away from those that just don’t seem to understand him. His time away, however, is interrupted by his step-sister Olivia (Tea Falco) who just so happens to be trying to kick her heroin addiction before heading off to live in the country with an ex-lover. Voila! There you have it and not much more.
Lorenzo and Olivia are initially at odds, not having seen each other in several years, both damaged by their parents’ relationships. To cope with their pain Olivia turned to drugs, Lorenzo hides in his shell. Otherwise, they eventually learn to coexist, but by the end of the film I didn’t get the feeling that once their week in the basement was up either had learned anything or come out any different than they were when they entered. The point of it all was lost on me and I wasn’t too interested in finding it.
All that can really be taken away from the film is the lush cinematography from Fabio Cianchetti and the performances from Aninori and Falco, which are worth noting, but not entirely satisfying. I saw a lot of Emile Hirsch in Antinori’s performance (which is to say he has his moments) and Falco, while decent, is hindered by the fact she is resigned to playing another junky attempting to kick the habit cold turkey. Night sweats and clutching at a fur coat as a blanket, she plays the role no different than we have seen several times before.
In comparison to the other films I’ve seen at this year’s Cannes Film Festival this one has the least to say and in turn I am left grasping at straws, looking for anything to discuss. Bertolucci even mentions in the notes how he, at one point, was experimenting with 3-D for the film, which would have been a complete waste of time, but again proves this was just an experiment to see if he could still put together a feature film. He seems convinced adding, “I feel I’m back on the run and I’m ready to make another film as soon as possible.”
I can only hope his next is less of a test run and more of a project with passion. This was a simple story that essentially goes nowhere and even irritated me a bit in the end, with a closing zoom I can only presume was meant to be a call back to Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, which, if it was, is extraordinarily presumptuous.
