PROBING THE PAIN OF A FAMILY IN FREE FALL
Los Angeles Times
By Kenneth Turan
Times Film Critic
January 25 2002

"The Son's Room" is heartbreaking and not. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 
and a top contender for the best foreign language Oscar, it is a measured, 
decorous, at times pat film that manages to be quietly moving because it 
touches on something real.

Nanni Moretti, known in Italy for puckish investigations of modern life, such 
as "Caro Diario," that have led to comparisons to Woody Allen, not only 
directed this quite different film, he also co-wrote, co-produced and stars 
as well.

Moretti plays Giovanni, a psychiatrist in the small Italian town of Ancona, 
someone much more serious than his usual characters. He's a contented 
paterfamilias, thoroughly involved with his wife, Paola (Laura Morante), and 
their two teenage children, daughter Irene (Jasmine Trinca), a basketball 
player, and son Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice). Giovanni is introduced looking 
with fascination at dancing Hare Krishnas outside a cafe after his morning 
run. Their ability to live unencumbered in the moment turns out to be the 
opposite of the careful, deliberate way the therapist goes about his life and 
work.

Some of Giovanni's patients have amusing, exasperating problems and the most 
boring dreams, while others, like a man who fears he will turn into a 
child-molesting monster, have quite serious dilemmas. To them all, Giovanni 
gives a variant of the calming advice that will come back to haunt him: "We 
can't control our lives completely. We do what we can. Just take a more 
relaxed approach to life and the world."

"The Son's Room" spends as much time with the therapist's family as with his 
patients, especially with Andrea, the son Giovanni is often frustrated with, 
for reasons ranging from the boy's not playing competitively enough on the 
tennis court to being accused of stealing a fossil at school. These are 
small-potato difficulties, but they allow us to get to know Andrea, to feel 
comfortable with him around, to immerse us in his life.

Then, typically unexpectedly, the worst thing that can happen to a family 
happens to Giovanni's: a tragedy takes place, and in its somber, unhurried 
way, "The Son's Room" offers an affecting sense of how that would be.

The tragedy, it turns out, lays waste to everything it touches, and there's 
nothing that it doesn't touch. The family finds itself in emotional 
free-fall, in a situation without rules or guidance, where Giovanni can't 
begin to take his own good advice and his wife and daughter find the pain so 
deep they have to retreat into themselves if they are to survive at all.

Although Moretti is better at being serious than his earlier work would have 
you expect, he is still someone who acts at a remove, who tiptoes at the edge 
of deep emotion. So it falls to Morante, (seen in John Malkovich's "The 
Dancer Upstairs" at the Sundance Film Festival, co-starring with Javier 
Bardem) to provide the feeling center of "The Son's Room." Her despair as a 
mother, her uncertainty, her passion is what gives this film its life. When 
she cries, it is always for real...

Yet just when you despair most, just when a place of prominence is given to 
Brian Eno's soft-rock "By This River," "The Son's Room" regains its footing. 
A chance event raises the question of whether it is possible for life to 
reassert and rekindle itself, for life to, in effect, rescue life. It's here 
that the virtues of Moretti's determination not to overstate or overdo things 
are most evident. Even if "The Son's Room" did not totally trust itself 
before, it does now, when it counts.
*
MPAA rating: R, for language and some sexuality. Times guidelines: adult 
subject matter and some moments of sensuality.

'The Son's Room'

Nanni Moretti ...Giovanni
Laura Morante ...Paola
Jasmine Trinca ...Irene
Giuseppe Sanfelice ...Andrea
Sofia Vigliar ...Arianna
A Sacher Film-Bac Films--StudioCanal co-production, in collaboration with Rai 
Cinema and Tele+, released by Miramax Films. Director Nanni Moretti. 
Producers Angelo Barbagallo, Nanni Moretti. Screenplay Linda Ferri, Nanni 
Moretti, Heidrun Schleef. Cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci. Editor Esmeralda 
Calabria. Costumes Maria Rita Berbera. Music Nicola Piovani. Running time: 1 
hour, 39 minutes.