I Love Italian Everything

Ever since I became a mother my least favorite genre of movies and TV has been the Dead Mother Genre. In TV shows like “Full House” and “The Andy Griffith Show” to movies like “to Sleepless in Seattle” even though everyone seems sad enough, they’re all having a little too much fun minus the mom.

So why doesn’t Caos Calmo (Quiet Chaos) feel like it’s part of the dead mom genre? Written by and starring Nanni Moretti, it’s not about the dead mom or the smiling through the tears after her funeral. It’s a punch in the stomach. It’s about sorting out being awake and living in a nightmare, and it’s about figuring out how to function in the middle of the nightmare.Released eight years after La Stanza Del Figlio, Nanni Moretti has really grown as an actor and gives a solid, believable performance as Pietro, whose wife dies and leaves him alone to raise their little girl. It’s really hard to figure out how Pietro is feeling after the funeral; he seems pretty numb and restless and not sure what to do with himself.

What he does is unconventional but inspired – he stops going to the office and plants himself in a park outside his daughter’s school every day after he drops her off and tells her that he’ll be there all day and waiting for her when she’s done. During the day he stares at her window, attempting to telepathically will her to come to it and wave to him. He doesn’t stop working – her conducts business from his car. In fact there is a really funny scene in which the big boss, played in a cameo performance by Roman Polanski, comes to him in the park for a meeting.

He makes friends with all the moms and other random people who frequent the park during the day and he comes to seem content. It’s just real life – nothing big and flashy. No emotional tirades against God or teary montages remembering when mom was alive. Just a man putting one foot in front of the other and making things OK for his daughter. And for himself. He knows that he’ll do better if he is near her.

Nanni Moretti really takes a different kind of look at the death of a family member this time -in La Stanza Del Figlio he drags us through the muck, making us feel everyone’s pain. In Caos Calmo he gives us a break and lets us examine this man’s pain in a detached way.

And one more thing: If I died I really wouldn’t want silly montages of my special time on earth on earth but I would like to think that everyone would be a little messed up over my death – for awhile anyway.