For young Italian brothers, political and personal passions collide

Accio (Elio Germano, left) and Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) play brothers with wildly different political views. (thinkfilm)

An Italian movie about two young siblings who take up opposing political ideologies in the 1960s and '70s might sound too allegorical to bear. At what point do they stop being kiosks and start being people? When they fall in love with the same woman? Please. And yet this is very much what Daniele Luchetti's ripe, ferociously acted comic drama "My Brother Is an Only Child" is about.

Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) is a left-wing communist with a sleepy, rumpled face (Benicio Del Toro with sparkling eyes). He takes a factory job in his small town to better harass its owners. He holds rallies. He flirts with terrorism. His younger brother, Accio (Elio Germano), is a Latin scholar who happens to be a serious, card-carrying member of the fascist party.

Accio and Manrico are living with their parents and sister in the same crumbling apartment, but the tension between them is only partly a matter of politics (only once do we see them on opposite sides of a riot). Accio is drawn to Francesca (Diane Fleri), the soulful fellow lefty Manrico is dating. In their amusing introductory scene, Accio tells her he's a fascist the way you might tell someone you like "Rubber Soul." She's taken aback. She can't quite believe that her boyfriend's charming, otherwise reasonable brother believes in so much that she doesn't.

But the beauty of this movie comes from how the characters are not their politics. The brothers are at odds, but Luchetti keeps the bond between them tight, and the movie light, for as long as it can stand lightness. (There are great old Italian pop songs everywhere.) The director is working from a screenplay he wrote with Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, the pair who gave us an epic version of this tale in 2003, "The Best of Youth." That movie had a breathtaking scope that told the story of modern Italy through one family. "My Brother" was adapted from Antonio Pennacchi's novel "Il Fasciocomunista," and it's a smaller movie, told mostly from Accio's perspective.

The character comes of age both ideologically and sexually - not so much with Francesca but with Bella (Anna Bonaiuto), the seasoned wife of Accio's good-hearted mentor (Luca Zingaretti). Accio is mild in manner, wavering on the knife's edge between adolescence and adulthood, but his head can be hot. He throws his arm up and straight out during pro-Soviet demonstrations, and the violence that comes with defending and promoting his beliefs (musical and otherwise) exhilarates and shocks him. (Indeed, this might be the first time someone has had his nose busted over Beethoven.) Hilariously, when Accio's sister (Alba Rohrwacher) needs a thug to rough up a boyfriend, she asks her in-house fascist. And he loves it.

As Accio, Germano is full of surprises. He doesn't seem capable of threat - he looks too much like a choirboy to play such a bully. But there's more to Accio than his volatility. Germano creates a gradually sensitive and sensible character, someone who is open to the intellectual expansion that comes with maturity. On edge and at peace, he's like the Al Pacino of the first half of the 1970s.

But "My Brother Is an Only Child" owes more to Bernardo Bertolucci's "Before the Revolution" (1964) and Marco Bellocchio's "Fists in the Pocket" (1965) - thunderous movies about young Italian men in the throes of sexual and political awakening. Luchetti's film is a quieter and less astonishing tribute. But it might be wiser. Bellocchio and Bertolucci were very young adults when they made their movies. Their explosive immediacy still feels unexpected - the movie-going equivalent of stepping on a landmine.

"My Brother" is more contemplative. At some point Accio's mother (the heartbreakingly good Angela Finocchiaro) goes to some government office to see what the holdup is on the new homes her family and her neighbors are paying to live in but haven't moved into. The keys hang in agonizing sight but out of reach. The mother turns to her son and tells him to do something, but he can't do anything. In a sense, the movie is about Accio's appreciation of the practical limits of ideology and the practical uses of rebellion, and it's a poignant realization. What good is a political movement if it can't get you moved into your own house?

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.