"Family Diary" centers around Enrico (Mastroiani) and his relationship to his younger brother (Perrin). Ninety percent of the film is composed of shots them. It is amazing that Zurlini has managed to create such a chick flick when the primary characters are essentially all male.
This is the Italian version of "Love Story." It is impossible for me to believe that Erich Segal did not see this movie, and then make it into his best-seller with a simple gender-swap.
*** SPOILERS ***
The movie can be fully summed up as follows: two brothers are estranged. They attempt to become close, with slight success. Younger brother gets an incurable disease. Younger brother dies. The end.
After saying that, I'm not sure how much more detail is required. (Apparently less than I provided, because I exceeded the 1000 word limit.)
Enrico and Lorenzo's mother died of complications following childbirth. This is translated, by everyone involved, as Lorenzo having killed her. To offset this somehow, he is brought up from birth by a rich person, "adopted" by their servant, Salocchi (Randone). Enrico hates and resents Lorenzo.
Now Lorenzo is eighteen and Enrico late twenties. Lorenzo has been brought up a jet-setter, while Enrico is a vitellone, living in a room by himself, so impoverished that his electricity has been turned off. He aspires desultorily to writing, but is otherwise unemployed.
Unable to support his grandmother (Sylvie), Enrico places her in a charity old folks' home run by martinet nuns when she becomes too old to work. Why the father never makes any financial contribution to the family is never alluded to, much less explained.
Lorenzo has a fight with Salocchi and leaves; shows up on Enrico's doorstep; announces he will stay for a while. Although he says he looked it up in the phone book, it turns out he got Enrico's address from grandmother, whom he has been secretly visiting.
Lorenzo is shy, distant and awkward. Enrico mostly doesn't seem to want him around. Lorenzo takes to his brother immediately, for some incomprehensible reason, but Enrico only shows slight, grudging affection developing.
They go to visit grandmother at the nunnery a few times. Lorenzo is stiff and awkward with her too. The narration eventually says she has died.
Lorenzo's sugar daddy dies; Salocchi descends further and further into poverty. He can no longer pay for Lorenzo's schooling. Lorenzo tries to find a job in 1939 Fascist Italy, and doesn't do very well. Enrico, who by this time is now a productive member of the Establishment, tells Lorenzo he must figure out what he wants to do with his life.
Lorenzo is not able to do this, however, and gets a low-paying job. He marries. I assume it's to the girl he introduces to Enrico on their way to a movie. I'm not completely sure of this, however, as she only appears on camera in that one scene, and is not mentioned by name after they marry. They have a child, who is never shown.
Enrico moves to Rome, where Lorenzo tells him that he has a disease that nobody understands. Lorenzo is transferred to the Rome Hospital, where doctors experiment on him, since he's a charity patient. They are ineffectual.
Enrico and Lorenzo have long talks in his hospital room, Lorenzo aware he is dying. Enrico knows it too, but valiantly tries to pretend to Lorenzo. They have a few shallow conversations touching on God, Jesus and communism.
"Where are you? It's so dark. Come closer. I can't see you." This cliché is uttered by Lorenzo in a sunlit room with Enrico's face inches from his.
For some unexplained reason, now that Lorenzo is moribund, Enrico is consumed with love for him. Lorenzo becomes almost feminine at this point, repeatedly demanding that Enrico kiss him, hold him, never leave him, etc. He tells Enrico he's all he has, despite the phantom existence of his wife and child, to whom he is constantly begging to be sent "home."
At the end, Enrico sends him to Florence, so that he won't have to watch him die (this is explicitly stated by Enrico).
*** END OF SPOILERS ***
The only comedy relief in this tear-jerker is Orson Welles' voice-over narration. Inexplicably, the subtitles were not removed during these parts, and they don't match Welles' more colorful phrasing. The film is told in first person, from Enrico's point of view, but the narration is suddenly in third person, so whenever the subtitles say "I," the narration says, "he." But "you" is still used (in both cases) to refer to Lorenzo.
The cinematography is good, although it is largely wasted, showing backroads of Florence in all its decaying austerity. In fact, I wasn't even certain it was Florence until Lorenzo begged to be sent back there, since none of the famous Florentine landmarks are ever shown.
In the very first scene, we are reminded that Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura," one of the most excruciatingly boring films ever made, had just come out, opening up a Bold New Way for directors to torture audiences, that infected all Italian filmmakers with the possible exception of Fellini. "Family Diary" contains a more-than-ample serving of drawn out shots of various people, most often Mastroiani, walking pointlessly down long empty corridors or deserted streets with nothing else happening.
Mastroiani's acting is caricaturish, especially toward the end where he finally shows some emotion. Much of it is very staged, and looks like he is posing for the cover of an Italian movie magazine.
Jacques Perrin's acting is superb throughout, the only thing that might vaguely make this maudlin dishrag worth watching.
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