I was not expecting to watch a good movie on a plane, especially in the category “society and family”. I was pleasantly surprised with “Anche Libero Va Bene” ( the english translation “Along the Ridge” is far from literal) directed by Kim Rossi Stuart (2005). It starts with a single father taking care of his two kids, a daughter and a boy. In this movie, Italians seem like lucky people: there are no family courts, no orders of protection, no financial assessments of the spouses’ assets, no parent barred from the school where the kids go to. Interestingly enough, the parents are not perfect and the kids know that. The father is a caring tyrant, who wants his boy to become a champion swimmer while the boy would rather play soccer. In the end, the father will come to grip with his boy’s desire, hence the title of the movie (“Midfielder is good too”). The mother is unfaithful. She has left her home and her kids, comes back and swears to be a good mother, take care of the kids and renounce her affairs. The children are not duped. At some point, the boy even tells a friend that “her mother comes and goes”. Yet the kids want her back and do not judge her when she leaves home again.
To me, the blow-out scene is when the boy receives a letter – at school- from his mother telling him that he is the only man she cares for and that she will explain later. I just have this blog to tell that sort of things to my girls.
