It's a really really good story and I strongly recommend it to those who haven't had as much a brilliant childhood as his playmates.It aroused in me a feeling of warm mixed with a little sympathy.I feel warm when I saw a three-member family (dad,a son,and a daughter) living together in love and harmony.I can feel them exactly the same way.That's probably because I had a childhood somewhat alike with little Tommi. There is a typical father who ,being unsuccessful in his business, have an inconstant temper,kindly but sometimes fractious.He want to bring up his son more like a man.He himself is a real man,of course.However his hard-nosed character and a wrong sense in woman failed him now and again.So,it's not difficult to see that he want to inject his unfulfilled dream into his son's mind.What a typical thought!It's not hard for anyone to feel little Tommi when he put a scrip with "I love you" in a girl's bag,when he climb up to the ridge of his apartment and shoot a neighbor with a slingshot,and when he is so happy playing with his mom in a pleasure ground.I think the director also want to put emphasis on child education.It's common problem for many fathers that you want him to become a swimming champion but he just does not show the least interest in it.

I think this debut by Kim Rossi Stuart is the true best Italian movie of the season 2005/2006. It's even better than "Romanzo criminale" (Michele Placido) and "Il Caimano" (Nanni Moretti). It's so touching and subtle it doesn't seem a debut, but we must remind that Kim Rossi Stuart was already quite experienced as an actor.The acting is phenomenal. Alessandro Morace (the lone Tommi) is the best child actor I've ever seen: he's natural, and he has got magnificent, sad eyes who can talk more than a speech. And Marta Nobili (the joyful Tommi's sister, Viola) doesn't confine herself to simper graciously as Dakota Fanning usually does. Kim Rossi Stuart and Barbora Bobulova are good too, but they were only confirmations.Cinematography and score are accurate and remarkable, considering that this film's budget was very small.And, let me say, Kim Rossi Stuart doing the ironing wearing only a pair of slips and a close-fitting T-shirt is a fantastic sight.

This film is about a family of four and told through the character of Tommi, an 11-year old boy. His sister is a nuisance, and he has trouble getting friends in school.The mother of the family has some psychological issues and disappears for weeks, then returns for a few weeks of nuclear family bliss.The father is a poor, stressed out cameraman struggling to find work. He goes from loving and caring role-model-father to angry, rampaging mad in seconds.The tensions between all four members of the family are really done well, the film is believable and very emotional. Both adults and children in this story give great acting performances.

Tommi, 11 years old, lives with his older sister Viola and his father Renato. At the beginning of the film we don't know where Stefania, their mother, is; but she appears again, and, even we came to know that in the past she hasn't been able to stay in the family and grow up her children, this time it seems she came to stay. Viola is happy, Tommi is more skeptical. Time will tell who was right. "Libero" is a defensive soccer player who doesn't have a specific opponent; Tommi, who is a very good swimmer but doesn't like to swim, at the end of the film says "Anche libero va bene" ("Even libero is OK"), when finally his father agrees to send him to a soccer school, even he'd better be a midfielder. This is a difficult film, dealing with the over-discussed family subject in an ordinary, but still very different way, aided by a superb interpretation of all the four leading characters, with a special mention for the first-time-on-screen Alessandro Morace as Tommi. Barbora Bobulova could be the best Italian actress if she was born in Italy (but we adopt her with great pleasure), and Kim Rossi Stuart, for his debut as director, is also convincing as Renato, even if he had to substitute at the last moment Sergio Rubini, who was the original choice. Probably the best Italian film of 2006.