Although I have labelled this as a drama, and although I found it uncomfortably dark and disturbing, there's certainly a vein of black comedy running through Fists In The Pocket that would arguably place it close to some famous Ealing titles, or modern British films influenced by those Ealing features, when it comes to making comparisons. An Ealing comedy mixed with something like We Need To Talk About Kevin. There's a combination for you.
Lou Castel plays Alessandro, a young man stifled in a home with his brothers (the eldest being Augusto, played by Marino Masé), his mother (Liliana Gerace), and a sister (Giulia, played by Paola Pitagora) he seems unhealthily in love with. Alessandro thinks that he has the answer to many problems created by his dysfunctional family, but that answer involves a number of deaths.
Having enjoyed a number of other films from director Marco Bellocchio, although I wouldn't call him consistent, I am always willing to at least go into his movies with an open mind. This film requires viewers to be a bit more open-minded than usual, considering how dark and twisted things get, but I couldn't say whether or not those viewers will feel rewarded enough once it ends. Not that it's a bad film, I didn't think so anyway, but it's a film that is happy to start and end in a way that seems to emphasise how much more there is to explore and experience at either end of the runtime.
Castel is very good as someone who is quietly psychopathic, and he even retains a vulnerability that makes him easier to keep watching as a lead character, while Pitagora is an intriguing mix of innocence and potential trouble. Giulia is not exactly Lady Macbeth, but she gets to show that she's not entirely turned off by Alessandro's ideas. While they're not kept in focus as often, both Masé and Gerace do well as the two people who loom largest over Alessandro, for better or worse.
I would recommend this, but be warned that it's not an easy watch. I think people will either love or hate it, there's very little reason to find it average. It's quite an ugly film, tonally, and none of the technical aspects work to hide that ugliness. This is a film that wants to drag people into a very dark and disturbing mental space, even if viewers are reluctant to go there. One to appreciate more than simply enjoy, but I hope there are others out there who will give it a go, and maybe appreciate it as much as I did. I never want to watch it again, but I have said that about quite a few films that made me feel equally unsettled and wanting to scrub myself clean in a hot bath. This may seem tame in comparison to others in the same vein, especially as I also mentioned Ealing comedies in the opening paragraph, but it worms under your skin and into your brain as everything creeps closer to . . . something that you have to call an ending simply because it's placed at the end.
8/10
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