Quiet Chaos

Pietro Paladini (Moretti, who also wrote the screenplay) is a super successful businessman when his wife dies in a freak accident. He copes with the shock by sitting outside his daughter’s school everyday until the bell rings. Others drop by to see him. Various factions in a corporate merger turn up to discuss office politics. His sister-in-law and former lover - yes, they’re the same person – keeps pressing him to discuss his feelings.

There are echoes of The Son’s Room, an earlier and superior Moretti treatment of grief, but this frequently touching, occasionally amusing character study never quite comes together. The plotting is flimsy. The emotional content, particularly a throwaway subplot involving a Down Syndrome boy, seems forced. Out of nowhere, there’s a lengthy, graphic sex scene between Pietro and a woman he has saved from drowning.

No wonder this is the first time in 13 years that Nanni Moretti has passed on directing duties.