1981 (Ricardo Trogi, 2009): Canada

Reviewed by Khristine Biver.  Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2010.

One of the films to come out of Quebec from the Film Festival, 1981, by Ricardo Trogi, is a touching story about an 11-year-old boys first love.  It perfectly captures the awkwardness of early love, and the male ethos of pre-adolescence.  Our hero, Ricardo Trogi, (Jean-Carl Boucher) is an Italian-Quebecer with a difficult to pronounce last name (a source of constant ribbing from his peers), tells the story of how he first fell in love with Anne Tremblay, (Élizabeth Adam) the smartest girl in class.

A classic tale of slacker-loves-achiever, it has a refreshing point of view, with a very mature slant and style of humor.  The jokes were usually subtle, but played very heavily on the general naiveté of youth, which gave the common story a very endearing slant.  The hugely autobiographical nature of the film lent a lot to it’s realism, even though the story felt fabricated at times, as all good childhood stories are.

We first meet our character as he is telling us a story about his father in World War II, growing up in Italy during the occupation, and immediately the tone for the rest of the movie is set.  Both of Ricardo’s parents are characters, his father the hard-working and absent-minded head of household, who’s just quick enough to stay a step ahead of his children.

The most capturing feature of the movie was the accuracy at which Trogi captured the spirit of being 11, regarding love, moving to a new school due to his family trying to change their station in life, making new friends, and dealing with puberty.  Even though it was the 80’s, you could quite easily see how things change but always stay the same, the only change is the object of lust and the newest gadget.

Visually the movie was very interesting, with dream sequences being handled like many of his French predecessors, in a very abstract but captivating manner, without being annoying or disturbing.  The movie covered many genres, from comedy to romance to biography.

The autobiographical nature of the film was quite powerful, but the way the story was told, it wasn’t a lot of “I’s” or “me’s,” it was a third person point of view with a lot of amazing insights into every characters psyche, which made it feel like any character study, but had every element of a good plot.

On the whole, the movie was exciting at times, nervous at others, exhilarating, curious, confused, perfectly capturing every mental state and emotion growth an 11-year-old goes through, discovering his identity, and just trying to avoid making each day worse than the last.