Caos Calmo

Two middle-aged brothers - Pietro (Nanni Moretti) and Carlo (Alessandro Gassman) - play ball on the beach when suddenly two women yell for help while in the ocean. The brothers risk their lives to save the two women, only to find that the women don't even thank them. When the Paladini brothers drive back to Pietro's home, they discover that in their absence Pietro's wife has fallen and died. Pietro's 10-year-old daughter Claudia (Blu Yoshimi) is distraught and asks her father why he was not at home to save his wife. After a quiet funeral Pietro enters an existence of 'quiet chaos', neglecting his duties as a successful executive, choosing instead to sit on the bench across from Claudia's school, waiting each day in numbed silence for his daughter's completion of classes in order to drive her home. His only goal, despite various interruptions from passers-by and family members in incidents both humorous and distractingly serious, is to be there for Claudia, visible through her school window, to reassure her of his constant presence. How Pietro gradually figures out his grief, the world, and his place in it, discovering a new relationship with Claudia, forms the story line of this tender film.

Director Antonello Grimaldi, working with a screenplay adaptation of Sandro Veronesi's book by Veronesi and Nanni Moretti, draws extraordinary performances from his cast of premiere Italian actors. In an classroom scene Claudia's teacher is explaining the word 'palindrome' (a sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction) and shares with her pupils how some things are reversible while other things are irreversible. Grimaldi and his writers and actors demonstrate this term as it applies to human events in this thoughtful story. The film, in Italian with subtitles, appeals both to the intellect and to the emotions. It is a little treasure.

Grady Harp

Chaos is part of the human condition, as is death. Combine those three aspects in a narrative that explores the grieving process of a well-to-do business man, and you have the basic plot for this film.

Each of us grieves in our own way but generally in a manner that's well-known and understood. The man of this story, Pietro Palladini (Nanni Moretti) is different, however, when his wife dies unexpectedly (in the first ten minutes): his attitude is one of apparent indifference. Moreover, his behavior takes another turn when he insists on remaining outside his daughter's school every day, all day, instead of returning to his highly paid, high-powered position as a senior executive with a company that's infighting a merger with an American outfit. When called by his office, he insists he can do his work in his car, or while sitting on a park bench opposite the school...

That sort of aberrant attitude raises questions and helped this viewer to stay with the story to peel back the layers and find out what's eating Pietro.

As the widower, Nanni Moretti gives a quietly brooding and pensive performance that has an almost di Nero quality. It's contrasted nicely with Carlo (Alessandro Gassman), Pietro's celebrity brother who is as extroverted as Pietro is the opposite – the veritable chalk and cheese. Between the two is Pietro's daughter (Blu Yoshimi) who also displays a marked lack of affect after the death of her mother. On the periphery to those three are the women who intrude upon Pietro's solitary quotidian watch over his daughter's school: Marta (Valeria Gollino), his nervously unstable sister-in-law; Eleonora (Isabella Ferrari), the woman whom he rescued from drowning in the film's opening sequence; and the stunningly ravishing Jolanda (Kasia Smutniak), the young woman who insists upon walking her dog – and herself – closer to where Pietro sits, with each passing day. As Pietro sits and watches her, his gaze tells us he's wandering into fantasy, without a doubt...

And, from time to time, some of Pietro's colleagues from the office turn up to discuss office politics and the impending merger – capped, I might add, with a cameo from Roman Polanski as Steiner, the business mogul who wants to use Pietro to help with the merger.

Except for one torrid, animalistic sex scene – simply a cry for connection between two lonely people – this is a gentle story that's beautifully photographed around Rome and Lazio, Italy. The acting, especially from Moretti and Yoshimi, is without fault, I think; and Valeria Gollino always gives pleasurable viewing. The soundtrack is adequate; the pacing is in sync with a story that is very much about self-analysis and introspection i.e. some might think too slow – but the editing and direction keep the narrative moving well.

So, enjoy the views, the music, the shaded park, and the transient visitors as Pietro comes to terms with his loss. Highly recommended.

Nanni Moretti is not playing his neurotic self this time but he is quite convincing as a man who can't deal with his emotions at all. The good thing about the movie is that all little story lines keep on spinning around him and seem to go nowhere in the end.

Just a few things put me off. I don't know if it was necessary to make the person a top manager. He doesn't seem the type to hold that sort of position. And the symbolism of the reversibility of palindromes is a bit cheesy and over the top.

But the thing that really put me down is that one sex scene. There is nothing wrong with it in itself but it does not fit in this movie at all. The whole atmosphere changes, it is as if the movie stops, the sex scene starts, and when it's over the movie starts again. Not convincing at all.

With sex and death, the two staples of literature, hulking mostly in the background, Caos Calmo deals mainly with parenting, by a single father no less, and the ties that connect concerned parents and their children. The result is a nuanced, always interesting film about human interactions in the semi-sane modern world. I mean it as a compliment when I say it is the sort of movie Jane Austen might have scripted had she survived to the ripe old age of 233. The film happens to be set in present-day Italy so there is a bit of local color for Italophiles, but it could have been set in any modern Western nation. Pietro, a successful businessman, confronts the sudden death of his wife as he seeks to ease the transition for his now motherless ten-year-old daughter. Apparently to show her he is fully there for her, he abandons his office and waits for his daughter in the piazza outside her school each school day. Tutto il mondo comes to that piazza -- gossiping mothers, a developmentally challenged boy, Pietro's hot sister-in-law on the verge of a nervous breakdown, his secretary with papers to sign, his colleagues from the office stewing over the progress of merger negotiations and what it means to them, a young beauty with a big dog who needs a hug (the beauty, I mean), even Roman Polanski in a cameo appearance. Over the course of the picture Pietro convincingly works through his feelings about marriage, loss, grief, friendship, family, and desire. The emotional center of Caos Calmo is like a toned down, more serious sitcom, like Seinfeld on downers. As in life, there are small mysteries unsolved, but no scene -- surely not the much-discussed nighttime scene that serves to affirm life -- is out of place. The film works. Enjoy it.

Oh, what a pleasant surprise: finally an intelligent Italian movie won the box-office battle. Yes, many people went to see the movie because of the notorious sex scene between Nanni Moretti and Isabella Ferrari, branded as obscene by the Vatican, but I hope they understood that behind the four hot minutes there was a movie, a true, heartfelt movie. The screenplay simplified many aspects of the novel, however they did a wonderful job: I prefer the movie to the book, for once, also because I just couldn't get on with the book. The Berlin Film Festival didn't appreciate "Quiet Chaos"; I'm not a professional critic, but I can assure "Quiet Chaos" is a movie full of sensibility, sweetness and depth, and it doesn't tell the usual, banal and cloying story. Nanni Moretti isn't wooden at all; Alessandro Gassman and Isabella Ferrari prove they can act; Alba Rohrwacher, Silvio Orlando and Valeria Golino are great actors and never disappoint; but the most sparkling star is the young Blu Yoshimi, with her impressive eyes and smile and her natural talent. I hope she'll have a bright future. The soundtrack comments the images beautifully; now I'm desperately seeking "Cigarettes and chocolate milk", by Rufus Wainwright, a magnificent song that must be part of my play list.