The Son's Room

Giovanni is a psychoanalyst in a provincial Italian city with an orderly life, a wife called Paola and two teenage children. One Sunday morning a patient calls and he gives up the run he had planned with his son. Andrea goes diving with friends that day and does not come back. The rest of the film is not about the death but about three people left afterwards who do not know what to do with each other. Nanni Moretti directed and plays Giovanni. Laura Morante plays Paola. The idea at the centre is a profession failing. Giovanni has spent years listening to other people's pain and managing it; when his own arrives, every tool he has is useless and he can no longer hear his patients. It won the Palme d'Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Mulholland Drive and The Piano Teacher were in competition that year, which is why the award was argued over then and still is. It also took the FIPRESCI prize. Who it is for: viewers who like grief handled without inflation, through ordinary detail. Who it is not for: anyone looking for formal daring. The film is plain and direct, and for some that plainness reads as too safe.