Film Shapes

We Were Children (or Eravamo Bambini ) is a Calabrian-set drama/thriller about childhood trauma and regrets. A group of thirty-somethings return to the small seaside town of their youth to confront a situation that has affected their lives since the moment it happened twenty years before. The film begins with a police patrol coming across a suspicious bloke in the bushes beside a villa one night. He threatens them with a huge hunting knife and is summarily arrested and taken in for questioning. The story unfurls from here, with detained postie Antonio (Francesco Russo) giving the police some details, and flashbacks helping us with others. These past scenes show a group of friends going through regular teenage issues. Margherita and Gianluca are a sweetly fumbling couple, though Walter might be a spoke in their wheel. Andrea is Margherita's irritating younger brother, and Peppino is the local senator's boy. The sun-tinged Calabrian past is juxtaposed with the more aggressively ...