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There’s a certain formula that often defines the recipients of the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious top prize, the Palme d’Or. These films, especially in the last two decades, tend to have a sense of importance about them, frequently due to their sociopolitical awareness of the world (Laurent Cantet’s The Class), or of specific societal ills.

From time to time, the Palme d’Or goes to a bold, experimental, and divisive vision from a well-liked auteur, such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. But more often it’s awarded to a film in the lineup that the majority of the members on the Cannes jury can agree is good. That felt like the case for Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake, as well as Julia Ducournau’s Titane,...

Nani Moretti’s Palme d’Or-winning exploration of the fragility of family life is a quietly devastating but surprisingly life-affirming film, brilliantly written, wonderfully acted and full of simple beauty.

Moretti stars as Giovanni Sermonti, a psychoanalyst who appears to get very little in the way of job satisfaction from his rotating cast of patients. His home life is a source of refuge – perhaps under-appreciated – where his wife Paola (superbly played by Laura Morante) and children Irene (Jasmine Trinca) and Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice), offer a picture of familial contentment rarely seen on screen. Andrea is accused of stealing a fossil at school, but Giovanni and Paola are convinced of his innocence. Irene stars for her school basketball team, and flirts openly with her boyfriend while Paola and Giovanni especially eavesdrop at the kitchen table.

The film proceeds episodically, the warmth of the familial environment buttressed by the cinematic warmth of Moretti and.

This Palme d'Or-winning family drama, written, directed and acted in by Nanni Moretti, is miraculous in its simplicity and emotional power

This beautiful film induces an ecstasy of sadness: it would be an insult to call it a "weepie", and yet weeping is almost the only intelligent response. Nanni Moretti is a director who has become associated with quirky, cerebral comedy and satiric commentary, and so this moving family drama was almost miraculous in its simplicity and emotional power. It won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 2001.

Moretti himself plays Giovanni, the paterfamilias of an educated, well-to-do household in the Italian town of Ancona on the Adriatic coast. He is a psychoanalyst and his beautiful, elegant wife Paola, played by Laura Morante, is a publisher of art books; they have two teenage children – Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice) and Irene (Jasmine Trinca). They are very happy, and yet Giovanni is beginning to have...

Known for his lighter fare, Italian filmmaker-actor Nanni Moretti gets serious with "La Stanza Del Figlio" (The Son's Room"), a highly contemplative but emotionally remote examination of the grieving process.

While there will be those who applaud the film for generally steering clear of heavy-handed manipulation, the scenes nevertheless have a prefabricated, synthetic feel that prevent the material from being tangibly affecting.

Judging from a very diverse audience response at Cannes, its ultimate success depends on the degree of viewer identification. Some might find it consoling; others will dismiss it as clinically calculating.

Moretti casts himself in the role of Giovanni, a psychoanalyst with a smart, pretty wife, Paola (Laura Morante), well-behaved teenage kids Irene (Jasmine Trinca) and Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice) and a comfortable home in a small Italian seaside town.

But their warm, nurturing existence is shattered when son Andrea is killed in a diving incident. As Giovanni consumes himself with various "what if" scenarios, his wife becomes obsessed with a letter written by a girl who had met Andrea the previous summer. Daughter Irene, meanwhile, takes out her frustrations on the school basketball court.

Not surprisingly, Giovanni's practice begins to falter as his patients' comparatively trivial problems begin to get on his ragged nerves, while his marriage also is threatening to come apart at the seams.

To his credit, Moretti assembles an entirely convincing family unit, and his character's fevered attempts to rewrite the course of fate by constantly replaying in his mind the chain of events that lead to his son's tragedy have a stirring potency.

But there's a transparent deliberateness to the storytelling (credited to Moretti along with Linda Ferri and Heidrun Schleef), that results in the picture playing more like a series of scrupulously connected scenes than a cohesive, involving experience.

That prevailing sense self-awareness is heightened by an annoyingly repetitive, tinkly piano theme by composer Nicola Piovani that drones on listlessly with the slightest provocation.

LA STANZA DEL FIGLIO

Sacher Film, Bac Films, StudioCanal

Director: Nanni Moretti

Screenwriters: Linda Ferri, Nanni Moretti, Heidrun Schleef

Director of photography: Giuseppe Lanci

Set designer: Giancarlo Basili

Editor: Esmeralda Calabria

Costume designer: Maria Rita Barbera

Music: Nicola Piovani

Color/stereo

Cast:

Giovanni: Nanni Moretti

Paola: Laura Morante

Irene: Jasmine Trinca

Andrea: Giuseppe Sanfelice

Oscar: Silvio Orlando

Arianna: Sofia Vigliar

Running time -- 99 minutes

No MPAA rating...

Known for his lighter fare, Italian filmmaker-actor Nanni Moretti gets serious with "La Stanza Del Figlio" (The Son's Room"), a highly contemplative but emotionally remote examination of the grieving process.

While there will be those who applaud the film for generally steering clear of heavy-handed manipulation, the scenes nevertheless have a prefabricated, synthetic feel that prevent the material from being tangibly affecting.

Judging from a very diverse audience response at Cannes, its ultimate success depends on the degree of viewer identification. Some might find it consoling; others will dismiss it as clinically calculating.

Moretti casts himself in the role of Giovanni, a psychoanalyst with a smart, pretty wife, Paola (Laura Morante), well-behaved teenage kids Irene (Jasmine Trinca) and Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice) and a comfortable home in a small Italian seaside town.

But their warm, nurturing existence is shattered when son Andrea is killed in a diving incident. As Giovanni consumes himself with various "what if" scenarios, his wife becomes obsessed with a letter written by a girl who had met Andrea the previous summer. Daughter Irene, meanwhile, takes out her frustrations on the school basketball court.

Not surprisingly, Giovanni's practice begins to falter as his patients' comparatively trivial problems begin to get on his ragged nerves, while his marriage also is threatening to come apart at the seams.

To his credit, Moretti assembles an entirely convincing family unit, and his character's fevered attempts to rewrite the course of fate by constantly replaying in his mind the chain of events that lead to his son's tragedy have a stirring potency.

But there's a transparent deliberateness to the storytelling (credited to Moretti along with Linda Ferri and Heidrun Schleef), that results in the picture playing more like a series of scrupulously connected scenes than a cohesive, involving experience.

That prevailing sense self-awareness is heightened by an annoyingly repetitive, tinkly piano theme by composer Nicola Piovani that drones on listlessly with the slightest provocation.

LA STANZA DEL FIGLIO

Sacher Film, Bac Films, StudioCanal

Director: Nanni Moretti

Screenwriters: Linda Ferri, Nanni Moretti, Heidrun Schleef

Director of photography: Giuseppe Lanci

Set designer: Giancarlo Basili

Editor: Esmeralda Calabria

Costume designer: Maria Rita Barbera

Music: Nicola Piovani

Color/stereo

Cast:

Giovanni: Nanni Moretti

Paola: Laura Morante

Irene: Jasmine Trinca

Andrea: Giuseppe Sanfelice

Oscar: Silvio Orlando

Arianna: Sofia Vigliar

Running time -- 99 minutes

No MPAA rating...