Calm Chaos

In un'anonima day of summer life of Peter Knights (Nanni Moretti) is shattered forever. His wife Lara dies suddenly, while he is not with you. In the same moments of tragedy, because Peter is saving a perfect unknown (Isabella Ferrari) dall'annegamento. To be close to his daughter Claudia (Blu Yoshimi), only 10 years, Peter decides to stay all day outside the elementary school to wait until the end of lessons. Day after day, Peter ends up settling in front of the school, leaving out the work and arousing the amazement of colleagues, his brother Carlo (Alessandro Gassman), the sister-in-law Marta (Valeria Golino), until you take consciousness that his behavior is just a way to not face the pain of loss.

Suffering does not enter ever staged, or at least not following the standard representative whose art has accustomed us: no rending scenes, no exhibition of pain superfluous. What "Calm Chaos" is linked to a sudden and violent death, yet Death does not speak almost never. Marta only alludes to the absurd view of his sister, but only convinced of the existence of a culprit. Peter can hardly find that his wife had more shoes than you believed him, but then delete all messages in your mail with a single and irreversible clicks of the mouse: Lara is no more, and you should not be know nor speak. Simply, Pietro Paladini is not suffering. There is in him a sudden silence, fell without sadness and without remorse.

Sitting in front of the school of her daughter, remains to wait for a pain that does not arrive. Why not suffer? Even Claudia seems to suffer falls asleep calm and not crying ever. These are the questions that Peter should have slowly and let life take its views new and unexpected. The garden, the bench, playing with the child who goes down from there every morning, looking out the window Claudia salute during a recreation, the beautiful and sweet girl who leads walking his dog, visits to friends and co-workers starting to fill full days spent there before wait the sound of bell. Peter has built such a massive diversion, made up of customs and rituals, not stopping to think about that summer day in which his life has changed. Besides school, as well Claudia, there is a sense of guilt to be addressed, we would be the blank face and metabolize. And basking better off to take a piece of the world until recently unknown, now the most reliable shield against pain. The experience of emotional emptiness is photographed, is somehow taken by our hero, but completely emptied of its emotional content. When the pain is too strong, often the only solution is to remove it. Peter lives in quell'annullamento so emotional that allows him to maintain the precarious balance of his life.

The lazy summer starts at an end, October brings the first leaves of autumn pressing, but he is still there, firm and immovable despite the advice of those who want the good, the scapegrace brother, a sister and an unstable po 'crowds. On the bench receives visits with whom he shared a pain or a concern, covering cash in fact ever, follows the vicissitudes of his troubled company, establish lists of pique houses where he lived, the airlines with which he traveled, while Seasonal changes flowing increasingly to preserve any possible weakness. If Claudia is maybe not suffers because you do not suffer enough - the notes Carlo. But when the girl confessed to some 'embarrassed that his fellow classmates to make fun him because it is all day on a bench waiting for Peter is to appear naked to the reality of pain and, paradoxically, dissolved in a relief. The armor landslide suddenly in a few words of her daughter. And if the silence no longer afraid, because it is no longer the ice that she held inside. The moment the pain makes its appearance, the viewer is given only way of insight through imperceptible expressions of the face of Peter and his gestures suddenly dissepolti from numbness dell'impassibilità. Directed by Antonello Grimaldi you pull back the with garbo and engineer Peter get away forever from that stage of perfection, psychological artifice constructed to protect the fragility of Claudia, who now has no more reason for being.

The homonymous novel by Veronesi, from which the film was suddenly revived fairly faithfully in the pictures and especially in a calm composed Moretti fell perfectly in the shoes of the protagonist. In all the states of mind that the shake, stunning indifference, fear the sweetness, Moretti brings a spontaneity and a veiled irony that so sweetly obnoxious. Even as the alternate sense of security and immorality, the character is always credible in his expressions of despair that the underground soul. And if the film can at times be somewhat '' detached 's only because he knew how to respect the perception that warns reading the wonderful novel by Veronesi, along with the constant desire to go beyond appearances and read between the lines. Why "Chaos calm," at least the literary version, it is the pain that manages to get beyond the appearance of his absence, is the pain that already exists, even when you do not show even those who test.

Emanuela Perozzi