Six Brothers, the review of the film with Riccardo Scamarcio, Adriano Giannini, Linda Caridi

Simone Godano, in his fourth film with Six Brothers, continues to demonstrate a certain narrative identity, capable of following and pursuing a core of highly recognizable characters. A narrative identity, among other things, measured and fluidizing, never anchored to a stale language or watertight compartments. His films, in fact, whether more or less successful (we continue to believe that Cross and delight of 2019 is, at least until now, the best), they measure the emotions, alternating – as far as possible – smiles with tears. It seems trivial, but life (and we talk about life) is not all white or all black: inside one emotion there are a hundred others inside, consequently creating a conflict perfect to be shown in the cinema.

As happens in Six brothers which, if we were in the USA, we would label as dramedy; however, we are in Italy – and this has a strong Italian identity, chatty and absent-minded – and so the general declination is reminiscent of one of those family comedies from the early Nineties, between Monicelli and Paolo Virzì. We are certainly not pushing the cumbersome comparisonbut it is clear that Six brothers has in itself a breath that somehow identifies with a certain cinema, approaching (could it be the location?) also to French comedies, in which every sensation is exasperated. Well, in this case Godano was good at maintaining control of the situation, without exaggerating but rather giving the film its own purpose, while swinging. How fluctuating, after all, is a ramshackle family whose words, grimaces and silences have to be traced.

Six brothers (knives?)

The family in question, which we would say is very extended, is that of a father, Alicante Manfredi, who is no longer with us. Seriously ill, and with two months to live before him, he decides to end it by throwing himself from the hospital terrace. This is the beginning of Six brothers which, as the title anticipates, focuses on the pieces left as a legacy to those six diametrically different children. Quarrelsome, resentfulmisunderstood and incomprehensible, finding themselves in their father’s house in a gray Bordeaux, coming to discover that the inheritance left to them is nothing more than a pile of debts and a pearl called Luisa.

Luisa, like the sixth sister, who the other five discover they have only when the will is about to be opened. Here they are all together, then: Marco, Guido, Leo, Luisa, Gaelle and Mattia (excellent casting choice: Riccardo Scamarcio, Adriano Giannini, Gabriel Montesi, Valentina Bellè, Claire Romain, Mati Galey), to which is added Giorgia (Linda Caridi), Marco’s wife, and Nadine (Judith El Zein), Manfredi’s last companion. Everyone grappling with their own demons, with their own torments, with their own illusions.

Restless humanity

It will be precisely the illusions that hover over this family group in an interior according to the subject signed by Godano together with Luca Infascelli. A film that is keen to show both technique and heart (the director’s hand-held camera, which almost becomes another observing character), constructing the scene following the tones of Guillaume Deffontaines’ photography, for an evolution deliberately lopsided, and surrounded by a thick layer of bitter melancholy. Six Brothers, therefore, should be read as a film about lost time, impossible to recover, and about how much we, in our own small way, and also in the family, are directed to maintain a certain rigidity derived from the idealization of the very concept of family.

Explained: the souls of Six brothers they are somehow dominated by their roles and their masks, little accustomed to openness and compromise, reflexively representing a sort of mirror of the society we live in. The Alicante family, in addition to being very large, is also jealous, resentful, sometimes even fickle and inconsistent. Events will then take over (like life teaches us), while leaving the feelings of the characters suspended, photographed in a very specific moment, and entrusted to a freedom that follows the interpretations of the cast, decidedly in part. In part, it is involved in exacerbating and easing a voltage which, it must be said, does not always correspond to the will of the story, sometimes not very effective in reflecting the genuine irresolution of the protagonists. More profoundly, however, Six brothers it is a film with different angles, not all cohesive, but nevertheless consistent with the path created by a director who is not afraid to describe a humanity that is as complicated as it is extraordinary.