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The First Beautiful Thing -- Film Review

4:32 PM PST 11/30/2010 by Natasha Senjanovic

ROME — "The First Beautiful Thing," Paolo Virzi’s carefully drawn portrait of a 40-something, misanthropic high school teacher forced to visit his estranged mother’s deathbed, spans four decades of a troubled family with enough gentle pathos and sly humor to compensate for a less than original storyline.

Forgoing the flashy sentimentality of, say, a Guiseppe Tornatore film, The First Beautiful Thing is a highly polished crowd-pleaser featuring great performances all around, especially from stars Valerio Mastandrea, Micaela Ramazzotti and Stefania Sandrelli.

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