Don't listen to the negative reviews

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

What a strange movie. It's flawed and messy, but I enjoyed it.The story jumps from 1970 to 1968 to 1939 and back and forth for a couple of times, but this never annoyed me. The problem is that there happens just too much; like the movie doesn't know where to focus on (the music, the romance, brotherhood, mystery?). The beginning is perfect, but it descends into chaos.The acting is very diverse. Hans Matheson plays the main character. I think he must be about 18 years old most of the time, but he giggles and jumps around like an 8 year old girl. And so do all is friends, who seem to overact in every scene. Other actors, like Mélanie Thierry, Gabriel Byrne, Ricky Tognazzi and Peter Vaughn act just great. (SPOILER)But it seems very strange that many of them are portrayals of each other in different stages of the lives, they don't look like each other at all!(/SPOILER).The music must be mentioned. The music carries the movie. I do have the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (and pieces by Bach, Pagiani, Dvorak and a Debussy) and it's excellent. The music, when preformed in the movie, literary brought me to tears. The Canone Inverso is a very moving piece, the concerto too (don't remember the exact name). A faintly distorted Clair De Lune is very beautiful, but is used a little too much (the piece on the CD only appears once and runs about 2 minutes, but appears maybe 10 times in the movie). Without doubt, the music is the best thing about this movie. It's the heart of the movie, and if music plays such a role, which composer is a better choice than Italian maestro Morricone? The production itself is very good. The sets look great and it seems that the put most of the budget for sets to good use. Most of the movie revolves around Prague and seems to be filmed there. It all feels very real, but don't expect Doctor Zhivago.This movie by Ricky Tognazzi is flawed. But a flawed gem can be great too. It's very romantic and the film breathes romance most of the time. When it doesn't do this, it feels strange and a little weak. Overall: 7/10. Could have been better, but still enjoyable!

Saw this at the Jerusalem Film Festival 2000, and this was the worst European movie I saw this year. It has a ridiculous plot, silly twists, English actors who portray in English characters that would speak Czech and German shot somewhere in the Czech Republic. The only time someone speaks the language they should is when a German soldier is shouting "get away from here!"... Has subtle yet very strange gay-erotic undertones - and that is between two characters that end up being brothers! - very uninspiring acting and very badly written characters. Some actors do not look their character's age and if you really try and create the geneology of this broken family - you would come to some very strange conclusions (I refer you to the fact that Jeno's mother has a second child when he is about 20 yet she looks not a day over 25, Sophie looks like 13 years old but married to a guy over 40 and Jeno meets her when he is about 18, Costanza was born in a concentration camp (?!) and in 1974 looks like 21 instead of over 30 and so on). This is an example of what happens when good talents try to create a film that would sell "internationally", i.e. will be sold under the American distribution system. You get a horrible muddled plot spoken i the wrong language and shot in the best/worst way Italian manure can be shot in. It is artistically for the ignorant who won't even notice that the Cannon Inverso is not truly an inversed canon.. Now how dumn is that?! Avoid unless you want to see beautiful shooting locations. The music is OK but gets the standard not-more-than-2-minutes-a-piece-please attitude. A shame to the amazing legacy of Italian film making.

I expected to see a simple plotted movie based just on a romantic love story. I was wrong. Beautiful plot, extremely well balanced between drama, poetry, musical vibrations, imagery and strong ecstatic emotions. My eyes, my ears, my skin were completely raped from the beginning to the end. The movie also discloses unusual parental relations teaching some lessons. I was pretty moved by the unlettered stepfather going beyond his poor origins and believes and granting his son the way to reach his dreams. My compliments to all: play writers, director, actors and music composers (included Debussy :-)). They have done an excellent work!

By the beautiful novel by Paolo Maurensig. It is the story of a Steiner violin and of his young owner Jeno Varga. It's a romantic drama filmed in Praha. Wonderful good music by Claude Debussy... I really enjoyed this film. Oh, by the way, Paolo Maurensig is from Udine, my town, in Italy...