The Way We Laughed

To watch Gianni Amelio's luminous The Way We Laughed is to reconnect with Italian cinema in all its richness of emotion and command of expressive gesture.

A haunting, richly textured film that, like the Italian director's unforgettable Lamerica, dramatizes the plight of poverty on an epic scale.

... a masterpiece about filial love and the horrors of poverty.

It's a damn impressive trick to build a film around narrative frustration and not cause your audience to run out screaming.