Just as Cannes has a direct line of directors, the Berlin Film Festival also has a relatively stable number of regulars. In recent years, it also intends to recruit more and more new directors, and the Japanese have expanded their direct line member clubs. This is a typical example for the Italian director brothers . The debut feature film "Elegy of Youth" by the brothers Fabio Dinocenzo and Damiano Dinocenzo was shortlisted for the Berlin panorama two years ago. And their second work "Rotten Stories" broke into last year's main competition unit, and finally won the Silver Bear Award for Best Screenplay . It can be said that they have successfully won the direct director of Berlin. Of course, they are like little ants at the feet of an elephant compared with the Danes in Cannes, but there is still much to be admired in the expression and content of this work.
The characters and plots all seem to be carved out of American independent film molds: the run-down middle class in the suburbs, strange parents, desperate children, black humor, adolescent sexual sprouts, and undercurrent parent-child relationship, and finally point to a no-no A recoverable tragic ending. Regarding the core of the youth growth rebellion, this story is quite similar to the French film "Out of Control Class" in the previous two years. It is also about children who are secretly organizing alliances in an attempt to express their dissatisfaction and despair in the adult world in their own way . However, the focus of this story is not only on the children, it also occupies a lot of space in the portrayal of the parents to explain the ultimate reason for the tragedy of the children.
This is a realistic social news theme with a peculiar narrative structure. It uses narration to intervene. It is said to be from a little girl’s diary and written by the narrator himself. Therefore, the perspectives of children, parents, and even bystanders are mixed in the plot, disorderly and chaotically intertwined with a picture of the depraved life of the run-down middle class in the suburbs. From the perspective of social critical factors, this should be the killer for the film to get the best screenplay. However, the styles of the two directors are not outstanding enough, the scattered plots are difficult to support enough drama tension, and the excessive use of hidden narrative techniques of off- picture space makes the character descriptions inadequate. This technique can be considered a challenge when used in group portrait movies, especially for viewers suffering from facial blindness. Nevertheless, the performance of the actor Elio Germano impressed me as always, although he was awarded with another film in this competition.
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