"Actor: Nanni Moretti"

• The Son's Room | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £9.27   |  Saving you £13.71 (218.31%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Son's Room, which picked up the 2001 Palme d'Or at Cannes, marks a departure for writer-director Nanni Moretti. The films that made his name outside Italy, Dear Diary and Aprile, were both highly personal and politicised semi-documentaries, and a strong political sense underlies the half-dozen or so features he made before them. By contrast, The Son's Room is a subtle, intense study of a family cracking apart under the impact of grief, with no overt political element. For all that, it's the most moving film that Moretti's yet made. "It captured me" he says "more than any other [story] I'd worked on previously. It's a film in which the director shares his emotions with the audience, without imposing his own feelings." As usual, the director plays his own lead character. Here he's Giovanni, a successful psychiatrist in a provincial Italian city (Ancona on the Adriatic coast). He has a beautiful wife, happy in her own career, and two bright, good-looking teenage children, a son and a daughter. Then, out of nowhere, tragedy strikes and in its aftermath, the fissures begin to show in the idyllic façade. Giovanni in particular reveals the insecurities and neuroses lurking behind his tolerant, easy-going demeanour. Moretti homes in on his characters with clear-eyed compassion, never milking the tragedy for facile sentiment but sparing us nothing of the gut-wrenching grief they feel. Nor does he succumb to the temptation of a feel-good happy ending: we are left with a hint of hope for the future, but no more. This is intelligent, mature filmmaking that respects its audience. On the DVD: The Son's Room comes to disc with just the trailer--and the flabby US trailer at that. A commentary from Moretti would have been more than welcome. Still, the transfer, in the original 1.66:1 ratio, is impeccable, with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound to match. --Philip Kemp

• Caro Diario | DVD | (18/05/2009) from £28.05   |  Saving you £-8.06 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Nana Moretti directs himself playing himself in this wry look at life. Presented in three chapters Moretti uses the experiences of travelling on his motor-scooter cruising with his friend around a set of remote islands in search of peace to finish his new film and consulting a series of medical experts to cure his annoying rash and cast a humorous look at his life and those around him. 'Oh my Vespa' 'Islands' and 'Doctors' each create a visual and verbal atmosphere of despair humor and laughter through which hope emerges.

• We Have A Pope | DVD | (02/04/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This Italian comedy from director Nanni Moretti opened the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. Disaster strikes the Vatican when Cardinal Melville, the newly elected Pope, suffers a panic attack just before addressing the people of Rome and is unable to face his public. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as a brilliant (but atheist) psychoanalyst is brought in to help the Pope confront his fears. With stunning imagery and an outstanding lead performance from Michel Piccoli, We Have a Pope puts a hilarious spin on the inner workings of this notoriously secretive order.

• Aprile | Blu Ray | (23/11/2020) from £12.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Nanni Moretti presents a semi-autobiographical account of his experiences in fatherhood, beginning when his wife Silvia's announces her pregnancy. Family, work and politics mingle in a charming light-hearted tale with a large helping of irony and humour. Following the general election of 1994, won by the centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, Moretti is encouraged by a journalist friend to make a documentary about the current political situation in Italy. Two years pass, another election is held, and he has still made no progress with his documentary. He starts another project, a musical about a Trotskyist pastry chef in the 1950's, but becomes disillusioned and increasingly distracted by the pregnancy. When his son Pietro is born and the centre-left coalition Ulivo wins the election, he continues to try to shoot his documentary, but with the film remaining unfinished he must learn to stop hesitating in order to complete his passion project. The film is a delight to watch. It is also a cinematic masterpiece. [Sight and Sound] Extras: Le cercle du cinéma - Festival de Cannes 1998

• The Son's Room | Blu Ray | (23/11/2020) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Nanni Moretti ('Dear Diary') writes, directs and stars in this story of family grief and bereavement. Psychiatrist Giovanni (Moretti) lives happily with his family in a small Italian coastal town. One Sunday he is due to spend time with his son Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice), when he receives an anguished call from Oscar, one of his patients, and feels he must go and see him instead; however later that afternoon Andrea accidentally drowns in a diving accident. Over the following weeks, Giovanni, his wife Paola (Laura Morante), and daughter Irene (Jasmine Trinca), remain shell-shocked with grief; with Giovanni suspending his practice, and relations between himself and Paola becoming increasingly difficult. When a letter then arrives from a girl who Andrea had met the previous summer, who none of the family knew anything about, they all become curious to learn more about this person who meant so much to their departed son and brother. Extras: Interview with Nanni Moretti and Laura Morante - Cannes Film Festival 2001

• Aprile | DVD | (13/08/2007) from £8.24   |  Saving you £9.75 (118.32%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Nanni Moretti's Aprile is a first person account of his experiences as chronicled in his diary from the day his wife announces her pregnancy. His delight at the news is soon supplanted by terrible fears of not being up to fatherhood or taking care of the future mother not to mention a general panic at the thought of attending the birth itself. Family work and politics mingle in a charming light-hearted tale equally blessed with generous amounts of introspection irony and humour. M

• Quiet Chaos | DVD | (02/03/2009) from £7.55   |  Saving you £12.44 (62.20%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Nanni Moretti stars in this mesmerising, wryly humorous film from director Antonello Grimaldi.