Quiet Chaos (Sunday, June 28, 2009) (76)

What do you get when you take an interesting story concept, a handful of great actors (including one acting/directing legend) and a long, long meandering plot that never seems to move above a snail's pace? Well, you get this film.

The story is very simple: After his wife kills herself, Nanni Moretti takes a (ridiculous) leave from work to sit on a bench in a park outside of his young daughter's school just in case she looks out the window. Through sitting out there, he acts as a therapeutic agent in the lives of the people around him and ultimately comes to terms with the events of his personal and professional life. (Honestly, when I write it like that, I'm sorta bored). Oh, and there's some hot middle-aged sex too.

I feel like there is a good movie lost somewhere in the middle of this, but it takes so long to get there, that you're sorta bored by the time you do. I like the idea of him as a therapeutic agent for those around him, but we never see him really struggling with the loss of his wife - as much as he sits outside the school because he feel like he should (which is rather strange, because life does go on, after all - and nobody in his life questions his judgement in this respect). I would have liked to see more self-evaluation or thought from him as to how much he missed his wife or the sadness he felt from her loss. I would at least like him to admit that he doesn't know what he's doing there and there is no master plan for what he's doing.

By the time we get into the professional storyline - where Moretti's firm is merging with another firm and there are some shakeups with the management of his company - it feels totally unrelated to the main gist of the movie. The sexual drama is (as I said before) super hot - but totally unrelated to anything else and totally unmotivated plot-wise.

Still, the acting is very good (I love Moretti's frank every-man style) and the writing of individual scenes is nice. I think I just wanted more ooomph here, that I didn't get. All in all, a nice film, just not brilliant.

I wanted to see this film originally because the trailer made it look like The Son's Room, a picture from 2001 also starring Nanni Moretti - at least the trailer made Moretti's character look similar. Well, it is interesting, but not as good as the earlier film.

Stars: 2.5 of 4