Like the same director's Le Bal, Ettore Scola's genealogical saga spans most of the 20th Century. Where Le Bal, moreover, was limited to a geographical scope scarcely broader than a dance floor, this one stays within the confines of a spacious second-floor apartment, whose transformations from era to era are beautifully understated, gradual, and -- the key to all truthful period re-creations -- only partial, never wholesale. There are times in the movie, as again in Le Bal, when carrying out the narrative plan, within its strictly prescribed limits, gets to be a bit of a grind -- more so, strange to say, nearer the beginning, when the characters are either unknown to us or are soon to depart for good (or to be reincarnated in other, older actors). Not at all like Le Bal, this one gets better as it goes -- as, especially, Vittorio Gassman and Fanny Ardant come into it (not counting the first scene when Gassman, if you follow, appears as his own grandfather). Better, that is, as the aging process becomes the explicit subject of it, and as the mood grows more contemplative. The passage of time is not only the movie's main concern; it is its best ally. With Stefania Sandrelli and Philippe Noiret. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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