It's like a psychological study, but performed with grace and humanity
Quiet Chaos (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:26
Rotten:8
Average Rating:6.3/10
Consensus: An understated and thoughtful insight into grief and despair, with a stellar turn from Nanni Moretti.
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
US Box Office: $0
Synopsis: Nanni Moretti stars in and co-wrote this moving Italian drama about grief. Pietro (Moretti) has just lost his wife, and he is left alone with their young daughter (Blu Yoshimi). He promises the... Nanni Moretti stars in and co-wrote this moving Italian drama about grief. Pietro (Moretti) has just lost his wife, and he is left alone with their young daughter (Blu Yoshimi). He promises the girl that he will wait for her in the car when she returns to school for the first time, but then his temporary offer turns into habit. Now, Pietro spends his days in his car, watching the world around him and grieving in his own way. [More]
Starring: Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, Isabella Ferrari, Alessandro Gassman
Starring: Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, Isabella Ferrari, Alessandro Gassman, Hippolyte Girardot, Blu Yoshimi, Kasia Smutniak, Denis Podalydes, Charles Berling, Silvio Orlando
Director: Antonello Grimaldi
Director: Antonello Grimaldi
Screenwriter: Nanni Moretti, Laura Paolucci, Francesco Piccolo
Producer: Domenico Procacci, Alessandro Pesci
Composer: Paolo Buonvino
Studio: IFC Films
Reviews for Quiet Chaos
A respectable and always watchable film about bereavement, well acted and well made.
Touching and sentimental in equal measure, Quiet Chaos exhibits many traits that fans will recognise from Moretti's own films as director, such as Caro Diario (1993) and The Son's Room (2001).
Quiet Chaos is an apt description for the emotional state of Nanni Moretti's grieving widower Pietro, in a film whose central theme is grief, but that plays out with a mix of humour and acceptance
Some of the plot is implausible, yet the core ideas resonate richly, and the characters' behaviour is psychologically intriguing.
It's subtle stuff with an appealing lack of contrivance and there is something very natural about its resolution.
Moretti's imposing frame and presence form the heart of this unexpected tale about love, relationships and loss.
The film, while uneven -- sometimes too on the nose, sometimes anecdotal and diffuse -- is generally absorbing, thanks mostly to the quality of the acting.
Grimaldi's elegantly understated film is a Groundhog Day of grief suppressed and life suspended.
Grimaldi, Moretti and their co-screenwriters have cunningly opened up the narrative cinematically.
Quiet Chaos feels thin and, especially towards the end, increasingly implausible. All the same, Moretti’s simpatico screen persona just about carries it.
A thoughtful portrait of the purgatory of grief that prefers small incidences and exchanges over grand gestures of sentiment and revelation. It’s sad – but never cloying.
Not even the momentary participation extraordinaire of a vertically challenged famous filmmaker self-exiled from the United States can save this phony pseudo-drama from its final collapse into a heap of inconsequence and male vanity.
Beautifully modulated, fluidly told film expresses pain with warm understatement.
Unfortunately, Quiet Chaos can’t help but become heated, and a ridiculous climax sabotages much of the emotional weight.
Quiet Chaos has strength and insight about the experiences that cause us to change direction in life.
This is a slow-burning, very well acted film that contains, almost disconcertingly, a graphic sex scene, a strange star-cameo very late on, and something close to a Hollywood ending.
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