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Acting Serious, Living Rationally, Thinking Gay |
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Next appearing in one-man play in London in July 2012: more info |
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that's right - one film
This is, in other words, a world that has long disappeared. It is a world of security – children respect adults without fear, they wander the streets alone and unafraid. It is a narrow world, with no communication more modern than the single telephone sitting in the hall, with horizons no more distant than one or two streets, with friendships and acquaintances limited to the faces one sees at school and neighbouring houses. And in such a world intense friendships flourish.*
What makes this film unique is Meynier’s and Sciré’s acting. Except that it is not acting; it is something more. Every second that Meynier is onscreen, his face, his body shines with excitement, with curiosity, with energy; he is, although he does not know it, in love with life. This is not yet a sexual energy – it will be another year or two before testosterone erupts, but you can you see its shadow in the excitement and uncertainty with which he talks to the girl he thinks he likes. In short, Meynier exudes exuberance – an exuberance that I cannot remember from any actor in any other film. Against this energy, Sciré's Franco at first appears lifeless. Small, young, uncertain, we wonder why Meynier’s Mario is interested in him. But Sciré’s reticence is the perfect foil. And the more we get to know Franco, the more we understand why he is so reserved; we see the hidden depths. Finally we understand that Sciré’s role is more difficult than Meynier’s, because he has to convey both the loneliness and sadness that beset him and the mask that he presents to the world. We know from the start that this film will end in tears. Happiness does not make great cinema. But what makes this a great film – in addition to the acting, not only of the two leads, but of every other child and adult who appears – is a plot and script that finds drama in mundanity, that does not take us down the path we expect it to go. Each step in this story, from the minor incident that brings them together to the momentous event – momentous, that is, in their young lives – that tears them apart, follows naturally from who they are, how they feel, how they behave. We know these boys because when we were their age we behaved and felt exactly as they do, or if we avoided such emotional highs and lows, we knew many others who did not, who were lucky enough to experience the highs and lows of such an intense friendship.
* And not just in Italy – in France, Roger Peyrefitte’s Les amitiés particulières appeared in 1943, with a focus on sexuality that did not arise in Amici per la pelle. And think about the boarding-school romances that coloured teenage lives across the UK throughout most of the twentieth century. 
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