In Which It Is More Or Less To Save Mankind

Under the Building

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Me and You
dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
103 minutes

Me and You shrinks Bernardo Bertolucci's entire career down to the slimmest possible margins, abandoning any extraneous decoration for its essential elements. The performers are relative amateurs; the sets a basement and an apartment building alongside indistinct streets that could live in almost any time, in almost any place.

Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) is meant to go on a school trip to a ski lodge with his classmates. His mother Arianne (Sonia Bergamasco) takes him to the bus that morning, and as they near the fateful moment, Lorenzo screams at her. He tells her that being dropped off in front of his peers would be shameful and humiliating. She does not let herself get agitated; she is used to being understanding of her son. Instead she tells him, as he rages against his seatbelt, that she does not think he wants her to get angry. This tells us everything we need to know about what kind of mother she is.

In another scene Lorenzo asks his mother a hypothetical question. What if they were the only two people left on earth and had to procreate? (He follows up by wondering what they would name their child.)

Incest has always been up Bertolucci's alley because it is a taboo that he can explore without dipping into the too-familiar milieu of violence and drugs. The dinner between Lorenzo and his mother is funny for how his mother does not react to her son's question. She is disgusted, clearly, but there is nothing of surprise in her response. This tells us everything we need to know about what kind of son Lorenzo is.

Dropped off at the bus, Lorenzo has no intention of being whisked off to a hotel in the mountains, although he pretends to know a great deal about skiing, among other things. Instead, he purchases provisions to last the week and relocates himself to the basement of his parents' apartment building, where he runs into his half-sister Olivia (Tea Falco). She explains that she is merely looking for some of her things stored there, but in a moment she is asking Lorenzo for drug money. He demurs, but it's obvious how delighted he is to be asked by her for anything.

It is still fun to watch how much Bertolucci can get out of young actors. There is nothing much to Lorenzo's story, and the reconstruction of a dank basement into a livable space is the major sign of his intelligence. The gloomy place does not constitute a fascinating setting - it's hardly enough to pin an entire movie on. Still, Bertolucci relishes the details, whether it be a ceramic dog, a mess of army ants, or a slender ankle. The point is not to distract from the human beings themselves and the minute changes that guide them.

Lorenzo and Olivia do resemble each other, with Falco's heroin addict possessing a mannish sexuality that is at once frightening and opaque. Her detox from heroin occupies all of our attention along with all of Lorenzo's, and the indeterminacy in her sexuality normalizes her little brother. Lorenzo at first views his sister's suffering in the same fashion he observes animals in a pet store, except now he is a part of the drama, not a gawker with his face to the transparent partitions. As he sees her suffer in the presence of others and her disease, he must shatter the glass.

A distinctly American soundtrack plays in the background, Bertolucci's nod to the world outside the basement. The songs themselves are all overused cliche, but that's kind of the point. Every part of Me and You is completely familiar to us except for the idiosyncratic basement, rearranged by Lorenzo as an artistic effort to compete with Olivia's still photography:

Lorenzo's talent is obvious:

Olivia shows Lorenzo that the adults in his life have no power over him. He is the only one with agency - she instructs him that whenever someone looms over you, superior, you possess the upper hand, because whatever static perception they have can swiftly be proven wrong. Olivia uses an older man for cash, a younger one for drugs. She is sincere with her brother because unless she can be honest with someone, it's impossible to go on living.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He is a writer living in Manhattan. He last wrote in these pages about Paul Bowles and the Fullbright Company's Gone Home. He tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

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