QUIET CHAOS/CAOS CALMO

Directed by Antonello Grimaldi. Starring Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, Isabella Ferrari, Blu Yoshimi, Alessandro Gassman, Hippolyte Girardot 16 cert, IFI/ Light House, Dublin, 105 min ***

THIS INTRIGUING, original drama stars Nanni Moretti as a reasonable man trying to cope

with a recent, devastating bereavement. Readers will inevitably be reminded of Moretti's own peerless The Son's Room, but Antonello Grimaldi's film is very different in tone. Less ruthlessly heart- wrenching and a tad more sentimental than The Son's Room, Quiet Chaosalmost manages to make a comedy of its unlikely subject. For that achievement alone it deserves a measure of praise.

Adapted from a novel by Sandro Veronesi, Quiet Chaosbegins with Pietro (Moretti), a high-flying businessman, rescuing a woman from drowning. When he returns home, he discovers that his wife has been killed in a puzzling - indeed, slightly bizarre - domestic accident.

At first, both he and Claudia (Blu Yoshimi), his young daughter, appear to cope well with the catastrophe, but, when the girl goes back to school, anxieties set in. Unable to move too far from Claudia, Pietro plonks himself on a bench at the school gate and tries to catch a glimpse of her through the classroom window. He repeats the process every day and, as the seasons change, he establishes a few unlikely relationships with the citizens who regularly pass through the little square.

The central conceit is an effective one, and Moretti, who co-wrote the script, brings convincing hangdog poignancy to the emotionally underdeveloped widower. But the numerous, sketchy subplots and poorly defined secondary characters often threaten to overpower the film with a clutter of irrelevance. The story concerning Pietro's business life - some sort of merger is afoot - is particularly tedious and the absurdly lengthy sex scene at the film's centre has no apparent purpose bar titillation.

Still, Moretti's charismatic presence holds the film together, and it's worth sitting through the diversions to catch a surprising cameo by, of all people, Roman Polanski.

Hang on. What's he doing lurking outside a school gate?