About.com Rating

Antonio Luigi Grimaldi's Quiet Chaos made its debut at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008, screened later the same year at the Tribecca Film Festival, and is finally having a much deserved theatrical release at the IFC Center in New York.

The film's dour theme (a father of a little girl loses his wife) and its dull poster (said father sitting on a park bench) may not drive audiences into theaters. This understated film about one man's unusual method of coping with grief is surprisingly funny.

From the opening scenes, in which Pietro (Nanni Moretti) saves a woman from drowning only to find his wife Laura dead in their garden with a broken bowl of cantaloupe next to her body, Quiet Chaos gets the ingredients just right. Unable to feel the proper emotions after her death Pietro neglects his job and focuses his attention entirely on his ten-year-old daughter Claudia (Blu Di Martino). He spends his days in a park outside her school, waiting for her to wave to him from the window during breaks. He grows familiar with a quirky cast of regulars and makes lists about his past.

Pietro's neurotic sister-in-law (Valeria Golino), his famous brother (Alessandro Gassman), his devoted secretary (Alba Rohrwacher), and a sexy stranger walking a St. Bernard regularly stop by, and Pietro discovers new pleasures: reading to his daughter, telling off his boss, smoking opium, and engaging in an unexpectly enthusiastic sex scene. Roman Polanski even shows up on Pietro's park bench for a cameo appearance.

Melancholic but lively, Quiet Chaos is a sweet crowd-pleaser, but the film, which is based on the novel by Sandro Veronesi, earns its emotions.

Quiet Chaos (2009)

Starring: Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, Isabella Ferrari, Hippolyte Girardot, Silvio Orlando
Directed by: Antonello Grimaldi
Produced by: Eric Abraham, Domenico Procacci