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By STEPHEN HOLDEN

• Directed by: Bernardo Bertolucci

Review Summary

With his pimply face, mop of tousled hair and blue-eyed stare that conveys a volatile mixture of fear and hostility, Lorenzo, the bratty 14-year-old protagonist of Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Me and You,” is the quintessence of flailing adolescent angst. Imagine a neurotic, sullen younger brother of Malcolm McDowell’s troublemaking character Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson’s 1969 film, “If ...,” and you’ll have a picture of this seething package of pubescent turmoil. If Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) is too consumed in self-absorption to be likable, the performance is a believable portrait of an adolescent who, to use old-fashioned terminology, is “going through a phase.” In this small, beautifully made film, which takes place almost entirely indoors, Lorenzo doesn’t crack open his shell and soar so much as break the surface by imploding, then dazedly lurching into the daylight. Instead of going on a ski trip with his classmates, he secretly plans a weeklong staycation, hiding out in a dingy storage space in his family’s apartment building after faking his departure, then sneaking back home. The cellar has a toilet. Its few pieces of shabby furniture are the castoff possessions of an aristocratic woman from whom his father bought the apartment. — Stephen Holden

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