La Nostra Vita substitutes sweat for psychology

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      Starring Elio Germano and Isabella Ragonese. In Italian with English subtitles. Unrated. Opens Friday, April 1, at the Vancity Theatre

      Young marrieds Claudio and Elena (Elio Germano and Isabella Ragonese) are crazy about each other. They’re always going at it in La Nostra Vita (Our Life), even with two little boys and a third one on the way. But that also tells us something bad is going to happen, and, sure enough, it’s not long before Elena dies in childbirth.


      Watch the trailer for La Nostra Vita.

      On top of that, construction worker Claudio also finds the body of an undocumented worker on his current site—something he uses to blackmail his boss into giving him his own subcontracting job. Presumably, our guy throws himself into the gig to drown his grief. And that’s a good alternative if we’re to believe an earlier scene, in which he shouts out the lyrics to a schlocky pop song at his wife’s funeral (especially since there was already a long stretch of him singing along with the same number at the start).

      That’s what passes for introspection in the hands of director Daniele Luchetti, who fashioned the episodic and unconvincing script with two others. The generally effective principals have been seen in a number of English-language films, and Germano also starred in Luchetti’s similarly rambling but much better My Brother Is an Only Child. This one offers some fleeting observations of prejudice and working-class struggle in modern, multicultural Italy, but these aspects are swamped by the parade of nonsensical events, which include Claudio borrowing money from dangerous Romanies and shacking up with the ex-wife of the dead worker while taking on a daddy role to the woman’s almost grown son—all on the way to an utterly unearned happy ending.

      Moreover, the tale is told almost entirely through oppressive, hand-held close-ups that substitute sweat for psychology. And, of course, there are those damn songs.

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