Sly and subtle take on family life

In a tiny flat in Rome, two children try to deal with a mother addicted to leaving them and a father who hugs them so tight they can hardly breathe.

The film is full of sly, sad humour. Renato (Kim Rossi Stuart) is a cameraman who always thinks he knows better than the director. While on desert location for an exotic car ad, he becomes obsessed with getting one of the backdrop camels in shot. The camel - not the car - should be the star of the show, he thinks. He winds up being thrown off the set but is convinced the producers will come crawling back.

He also thinks his unreliable wife Stefania (Barbora Bobulova) has changed her ways. Ironically, given his job, he has no sense of the bigger picture.

Meanwhile, the tight-lipped young hero, Tommi (Alessandro Morace), is an enigma reminiscent of Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows. Yet the hot-house atmosphere conjured up by first-time director Rossi Stuart (who cast himself as the dad only when the original actor pulled out) has a claustrophobic power all of its own.

The film rightly earned Rossi Stuart a director's prize at Cannes, but all the actors deserve praise for bringing such an apparently "small" story alive.

This particular nuclear family can't be divided into adults and children.They're just four individuals trying not to break each other's hearts.

Libero
Cert: 15