At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"I'm stepping through the door. And I'm floating in a most peculiar way. And the stars look very different today." – David Bowie, Space Oddity Coming of age can mean many things: sexual awakening, a religious or cultural ritual, or even achieving an academic or artistic goal. In Bernardo Bertolucci's intimate drama, Me and You, however, it is the time when a young man is able to see the world for the first time from a point of view other than his own and learns to give of himself to another human being. Based on a novel by Niccolò Ammaniti, the same author whose novel was the basis for Gabriele Salvatores' 2003 film I'm Not Scared, the film, Bertolucci's first since The Dreamers in 2003 and his first made in Italy in thirty years, is the story of Lorenzo, an isolated fourteen year old boy (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), and Olivia (Tea Falco), his older half-sister, a heroin addict, who inadvertently discover they need each other more than they ever thought possible.The film opens in the office of a psychiatrist. The first image we see is Lorenzo bent over a chair, prominently displaying his huge mop of black hair while the therapist, confined to a wheelchair (as is Bertolucci), tries to find out what he means when he describes everything as "normal." We never find out what the issues are that led him to the doctor's office, but meeting his overbearing mother, Arianna (Sonia Bergamasco) in the following scene gives us a clue. After telling her at dinner in a restaurant that he wonders whether people are looking at them as lovers because of her youthful appearance, Lorenzo fantasizes out loud about having sex with his mama if they were the sole survivors of a holocaust and needed to repopulate the planet. Embarrassed, she tells him to be quiet but with sort of a glint in her eye."If it was a boy, what would you call him?" he asks her but does not get a response. Lorenzo is about to go on a ski trip with his school but it is obvious that he is not keen on the idea, especially when he sees his classmates socializing together outside of the bus. Demanding that his mother drop him off several blocks away so he won't be driving up with his "mommy," it seems as though he has already made up his mind not to go. Using the money given to him for his ski trip, Lorenzo buys enough provisions (including obvious product placements) for seven days.Carefully avoiding being spotted by the building superintendent, he moves into the hot, crowded basement of his apartment house with his junk food, laptop, an ant farm he purchased for the occasion to keep him company, and a copy of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, translated into Italian. Lorenzo's peace and quiet is soon disturbed, however, when his half-sister Olivia, a former artist and photographer, shows up asking for a place to stay while she tries to kick her drug addiction "cold turkey" in preparation for meeting her lover in the country. Although the affection they first show each other would not make a very good love story, they gradually grow closer as he begins to move beyond his own concerns.Lorenzo tries to help Olivia get through her heroin withdrawal symptoms, caring about her health while bringing her food and sleeping pills.Through their interaction, he seems to grow in self-confidence and peeks out of his shell to see that there is a world outside of his cocoon. Though there are painful moments, Me and You is not a dark film but one that is brightened by the potential of two damaged souls coming together and experiencing love. Olivia tells him that she is a Buddhist and that the reality is that they are one and only their point of view keeps them apart, a sentiment movingly apparent when they dance together to the David Bowie song Space Oddity, translated into an Italian version.Me and You is a small film but a lovely one, without clichés or pretensions, a film that draws you into its characters and allows you to feel that you have made some good friends. Apropos of the film's title, Bertolucci takes us all the way from a "me or you" world to one that has a place for "me and you," one that is inclusive and filled with beauty, and in which we know that, for Lorenzo and Olivia, nothing will ever again be "normal."

Bertolucci's Me and You traces the hero Lorenzo's (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) change from his first appearance to the last. In the first we see only his mass of snaky black hair until he briefly raises his pimpled, bitter, angry face. He's at a session with a psychiatrist, considering what's "normal" when he apparently abandoned a friend who needed his help. In the freeze frame that closes the film Lorenzo is smiling, exuberant, and his skin seems to have started clearing up. In between the 14-year-old has connected to his addict half-sister Olivia (Tea Falco) and helped her go cold turkey. He makes her promise to stay off drugs. She makes him promise to stop hiding from life. Though she buys some hash after making that promise, she doesn't use it. In any case it's not her earlier heroin. Like epic heroes Olivia and Lorenzo both journey through the basement underground, surviving that hell to emerge renewed and empoweredThe title -- Me and You -- echoes through the film. Lorenzo's mother says it on the phone to his father, summarizing their exclusion from his confidence. Olivia uses it to express their connection. Perhaps Bertolucci uses it to share with us his memory or sense of the "normal" adolescent agonies. Like the film the title is an old master's embrace of the afflicted. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

It could have been a sort of explosive mix between Last Tango in Paris (seclusion) and la Luna (incest, drug-dependence, difficult teenager). A teenager and his older half-sister secluded in a basement for a week get to know each other for the first time. But Olivia's too busy going cold turkey with heroin and Lorenzo lacks audacity. He also suffers from narcissism, so he's not particularly inclined to let go and explore. So no sex, no kinkiness, no demolition of bourgeois values, no anarchy of bodies and minds. All this adds to the realism of the movie, but leaves you a bit disappointed if you expect a Bertolucci-like cinematic experience. I honestly expected to be shocked and disturbed one more time, with style and good taste of course. Instead, the result is quite bland. Certainly, it has its good moments and shots, but the acting leaves much to be desired and the atmosphere is somewhat post-revolutionary.

Lorenzo(Jacopo Olmo Antinori) is just another teenager growing up in Rome but his mother does not think so.Like any modern teens he has issues, some of which stem from the fact that its his fathers second marriage. Lorenzo is seeing a shrink, looks like a man boy with a wispy stubble, piercing blue eyes and an unruly mop of curly hair.When he agrees to go on a school skiing trip his mother is ecstatic that he is becoming somewhat social.They go to a restaurant for a farewell meal and Lorenzo wonders aloud if the people think they are a couple since his mother looks quite young.Then he pops a hypothetical question- what if all of humanity were destroyed by a deadly virus and only he and his mother remained on the planet, could they consider making babies to keep mankind from becoming extinct? Well, Lorenzo is that kind of a guy and Bernardo Bertolucci is that kind of a director.Me and You is the new film from this iconic and iconoclastic director.This is a small and intimate film where most of the action takes place in the basement of Lorezoes home, he decides to skip the skiing trip and hole up alone in the basement for some quality me time.He answers his moms calls and gives her updates from an imaginary ski resort.Soon he is joined by his step sister Olivia(Tea Falco) who is older and has bigger problems than him.She appears out of nowhere, realizes she has nowhere to go, and decides to stay in the basement with Lorenzo, much to his annoyance.Olivia is a talented visual artist gone haywire on drugs, she tries to cold turkey in his basement and meets her much older man friends.These two confront each other with hostility, get used to each other and become siblings in a sense.She even pretends to be his math teacher in a memorable impersonation.Since this is a Bertolucci film there is always electric sexual tension in the air and the possibility of incest. If you have seen his very controversial The Dreamers(2003), you know what I mean, but here he retreats to more innocent ground.It's almost as if the basement is a vessel from which the gawky Lorenzo emerges transformed into a beautiful butterfly.The last shot will of course remind of Truffaut's 1959 classic The 400 Blows, but while that freeze frame was famously open and somewhat pessimistic, Me and You ends on a cheerful life affirming note. How does Bertolucci know so much about youth?Lorenzo is not an Internet junkie, he is more interested in music and observing ants.Thats pretty old fashioned one might think but in Olivia he gives us a character that is more 21st century (an already passé terminology), and her angst seems more a product of the unlimited freedom that young people enjoy and become victim of.Bartolucci has made films like Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor and his ambitions have almost always been matched by his ability to capture the political spirit of the times.In The Dreamers, his sexuality and nudity drenched youth saga in the student revolution of Paris in 1968, he staged a scene near the Cinematheque Francais, capturing the protest over the ouster of its legendary founder Henri Langlois.But in Me and You, the politics is in the background and the basic humanity of two good young people struggling with life in the foreground.By the end of the film we care for both Lorenzo and Olivia and they care for each other.These actors are wonderful, they are so convincing in their roles and are cast so perfectly that there is never a false note in this nearly two hour film about two people in a basement.Yes, perhaps the viewing is made better with this icons name stamped on the film, but had this been made by a young director he would surely have been commended for knowing the pulse of youth in modern day Italy. Bertolucci is 73 years old now and this is his first film in 10 years. The metamorphosis of Lorenzo and Bertolucci's mellowing make Me and You an act of reconciliation. The master is making his peace with the world.