San Francisco International Film Festival 20 April - 04 May 2006

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A world-acclaimed debut film by a 25-year-old artist, this is a deterministic examination of the way in which an adolescent tries to insert himself into the contemporary world. One is introduced to a family of three boys and a girl who live with their blind mother in a villa, outside of an Italian provincial town. The eldest son, Augusto, already has a place in the outside world, a job, and a fiancée. During a weekend visit he observes Sandro, the adolescent son, restlessly bored with their existence, and struggling with portents of epilepsy and incestuous devotion to Giulia, the sister; Leone, the youngest son, is a hopeless catatonic. After introducing the spectator to this infernal machine of emotional claustrophobia, Bellochio gradually builds the story into an almost operatic work of high tragedy. It is Sandro who becomes the center of the film, a brooding Italian Hamlet-figure who roams through the episodes, deciding to act in the thoroughly totalitarian manner in order to gain happiness for himself, his sister, and his older brother, specifically, to rid the world of those who are useless and something of a nuisance. Out of the grim material described, the director has created a genuinely moving slice-of-life, for the performances are extremely urgent, impulsive and alive. There is the perversity of genius in these artists, and there is not a dishonest movement in the film. There are many great sequences here, and this is not a work that is easily forgotten. Like all great works of art, Fists in the Pocket touches an international nerve center, pulling us cruelly between emotional order and chaos.

—Albert Johnson

Copyright © 2006 San Francisco Film Society