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Quiet Chaos (Film)
Rating: MA
Running Time: 112
Country: Italy
Director: Antonio Luigi Grimaldi
Cast: Isabella Ferrari, Alessandro Gassman, Valeria Golino, Nanni Moretti
Distributor: Sharmill
Film Worth: $12.00
Release Date: May 21, 2009
“Well worth seeing.”
Quiet Chaos is a real curiosity. Many life-affirming and emotionally manipulative films have a tendency to grate, but this one engrosses and enchants by virtue of its sheer oddness and originality.
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 passive-aggressive, 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 times it'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.