CAOS CALMO (QUIET CHAOS)
Italy, 2008, 112 minutes, Colour.
Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, Isabella Ferrari, Alessandro Gassman, Blu Yoshimi, Hyppolyte Girardot, Denis Podalydes, Charles Burling, Sylvia Orlando.
Directed by Antonello Grimaldi.
Quiet Chaos seems a highly unlikely title for an Italian film! However, it begins vigorously with two women saved from drowning at the beach followed by the accidental death of another woman. The result is a quiet chaos for her husband and her young daughter – and the puzzle of the father about his grieving or not grieving, whether he really loved his wife, and the effect that this all could have on his daughter as she keeps going to school and acting as if nothing had happened.
The father, played by Nino Moretti, who showed audiences what grief was in his La Stanza del Figlio (The Son’s Room), is a high-powered executive involved in talks about international mergers, firings, competitiveness for chairmanships, with resignations in the background. There is also his carefree brother (Alessandro Gassman), a jeans model, and his neurotic sister-in-law (Valeria Golino).
The father opts to wait outside his daughter’s school and continues to do this every day (with business associates and family coming to him much to the astonishment and the suspicions of a young woman who walks her dog there every day). He becomes a fixture in the life of the park and the piazza.
There are touches of humour (a pleasant daily game with a Downs syndrome boy), touches of intrigue as his associates (and the boss, Roman Polanski) negotiate with him, and a change of pace for him and his daughter. There is a bizarre scene where one of the drowning women comes to him – is it real or a sexual dream?
The film dramatises grief and emotion in a more quiet Italian way.
1.An Italian story, Italian style? Characters? Issues?
2.The credibility of the characters and the plot? The beach, the house, home, school, offices, the piazza?
3.The musical score, the moods, the songs throughout the film, the ending?
4.The title – and the possibility of quiet Italian chaos?
5.The opening, the brothers, playing on the beach, the rescue, not being thanked? The women rescued, the later meal, Carlo and his talk at the meal, the motivations, the embarrassment of the woman? The repercussions?
6.The brothers returning to the house, Lara’s accidental death, the effect, Claudia and asking why her father had not come earlier, the funeral? Father and daughter, grieving or not?
7.The business background, the discussions, the merger, the deals? The personalities involved, Jean-Claude? and his friendship with Pietro, Samuele and his advice, going to Pietro? The French interests? The issue of Catholics and Jews? Samuele and his analogy of the Trinity to explain the power struggles? Steiner and his arrival to discuss with Pietro (and Roman Polanski’s cameo)? The deals, the secrecy?
8.Pietro as a character, as played by Nanni Moretti, his reaction to his wife’s death, the question whether he loved her or not, the twelve years together? His device of making up lists in his mind of airways that he had been with, of Lara’s secrets? Marta and her arrival, the past, the relationship? His relationship with Carlo? With the parents of the children at the school? Going to the school, promising Claudia to stay all day – and the credibility of his continuing to stay, day by day?
9.The impact of his staying, in the park, the boy with Down Syndrome and the daily game with the car locking and the boy waving? His being absent one day and the boy waiting for him? The girl walking her dog and her impression of the range of people that he met and who were affectionate to him? Discussion with Benedetta’s mother, with the various parents, with the teachers and how Claudia was going, the café and the meals, the old widower and making pasta for him? The range of visitors?
10.Marta, love for her sister, her sister confiding in her, her own life as chaos, theatrical, her coming to visit Pietro, her tantrums? Urging the holiday – and then unable to come?
11.Carlo, carefree, model for jeans, the opium and getting Pietro to try it out, the gifts for Claudia, her love for him?
12.Eleanora, almost drowning, Steiner’s mistress, at the meal, hearing Carlo’s version of what happened, her fainting, her going to visit Pietro, talking with him? The motivation? Her presence in his sexual encounter (or dream)?
13.Pietro, going to the group, the support, his not wanting to stay, fainting?
14.The focus on Claudia, her age, experience, love for her mother, coping with her death, going back to school, her school friends, the class, waving from the window, Carlo and his gifts, the outings, Pietro’s taking her to the beach?
15.Pietro sexual experience, real or dream?
16.Father and daughter, the effect on each other, coping, the realism of the experience of the mother’s death, decisions, getting some order out of chaos?
