Quiet Chaos review

Can an adaptation of the best-selling novel work on celluloid?

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When a woman dies in a fall – either suicide or accident, we never learn which – her widowed husband responds strangely. Each day, after taking his 10-year-old daughter to school, he sits outside the building all day waiting for her to come out – even though the girl herself doesn’t seem particularly traumatised.

At first, people console him; then they come to consult him… Since Quiet Chaos stars Nanni Moretti (for once not directing himself) the parallels with his film The Son’s Room are inescapable. Once again we see the effect of sudden bereavement and grief; the gradual process towards healing.

But Antonio Grimaldi’s film (which is based on a best-selling novel) suffers by the comparison. Quiet Chaos feels thin and, especially towards the end, increasingly
implausible. All the same, Moretti’s simpatico screen persona just about carries it.

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