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Film review: Quiet Chaos

As co-writer and star, Nanni Moretti has given us a curious, sometimes diverting, often affected little cine-chamber piece in which, like Woody Allen, he is not coy about awarding himself scenes in which he is a success with glamorous women. Moretti plays Pietro, a top television executive whose wife dies in ironic circumstances that faintly recall the beginning and end of his great film The Son's Room (2001). He finds that he cannot weep for his dead wife - indeed, it transpires their marriage was not idyllic - and that neither can his young daughter Claudia (Blu Yoshimi). Pietro goes into a strange state of denial and shock, spending all day, every day, outside Claudia's infant school, waiting for her to come out. It is here that various gorgeous women come to offer emotional contact, and top executives support, friendship and superbly lucrative jobs, in which latter capacity Roman Polanski has an odd cameo. It's watchable and fluent, but there is something narcissistic and conceited in Moretti's performance.