Before the Revolution

Overview

The study of a youth on the edge of adulthood and his aunt, ten years older. Fabrizio is passionate, idealistic, influenced by Cesare, a teacher and Marxist, engaged to the lovely but bourgeois Clelia, and stung by the drowning of his mercurial friend Agostino, a possible suicide. Gina is herself a bundle of nervous energy, alternately sweet, seductive, poetic, distracted, and unhinged. They begin a love affair after Agostino's funeral, then Gina confuses Fabrizio by sleeping with a stranger. Their visits to Cesare and then to Puck, one of Gina's older friends, a landowner losing his land, dramatize contrasting images of Italy's future. Their own futures are bleak.

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Top cast

Adriana Asti

Gina

Francesco Barilli

Fabrizio

Allen Midgette

Agostino

Morando Morandini

Cesare

C

Cristina Pariset

Clelia

C

Cecrope Barilli

Puck

E

Evelina Alpi

Evelina

Gianni Amico

Amico

Details