Strong drug use, strong sex scene
Italy/UK 2008
Director: Antonio Luigi Grimaldi
Featuring: Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, Alessandro Gassman, Isabella Ferrari, Silvio
Orlando, Blu Di Martino, Hippolyte Girardot, Roberto Nobile, Alba Rohrwacher.
Languages: Italian/ French
Runtime:107 minutes
Nanni Moretti plays Pietro Paladini, a successful executive who saves a woman from drowning, and then goes home only to discover that his wife has suddenly died. What follows is a sustained study in ambiguity and enigma.
Pietro takes his ten-year-old daughter, Claudia (Blu Yoshimi), to school, and decides – for no clear reason – to wait outside for her until the school day finishes. He does the same thing the next day…and every day thereafter. Rather than being an object of concern, or even a laughing stock, the seemingly calm Pietro becomes a sort of magnet to all the key people in his life. Work colleagues, brother, sister-in-law…they all visit him, and all “spill their guts”. It’s almost as if he’s a human black hole, or passiveaggressive, yet he resents most of the attention – Pietro is happier compiling mental lists of homes that he’s inhabited and airlines that he’s flown with. Is he in denial? Is he transformed by grief? Or could it be that, as he himself speculates, “If Claudia’s not suffering, perhaps it’s because I’m not suffering enough?”
Quiet Chaos is a hard movie to pin down. At timesit’s predictable, at others wildly surprising. Some of the plot is implausible, yet the core ideas resonate richly, and the characters’ behaviour is psychologically intriguing. What’s consistent is the quality of the acting – especially Nanni Moretti’s (Caro Diario, The Son’s Room) – and the revelling in contradiction. It couldn’t have a more apposite title. Well worth seeing.
Source: Mark Demetrius FILMINK (Australia)
Compiled by: Mark Horner