Fourteen years have passed since Nanni Moretti scooped the Palme d'Or with his bereavement drama, The Son's Room and while his subsequent output – notably the Berlusconi-inspired satire The Caiman and the papal comedy We Have a Pope – has always amiably passed the time, there has been nothing to match the clout of his 2001 award-winner.
Mia Madre, a new meta-drama about a director shooting a film while her mother is dying in the hospital, seems to promise "a return to form". But while the film is warm and sometimes poignantly human, one could never mistake it for, say, Haneke's Amour or Truffaut's Day for Night. Instead, this rather motley film is often stranded between tones and competing narrative threads.
Margherita (Moretti regular Margherita Buy) is in the process of directing a political drama concerning factory lay-offs while her elderly mother’s health deteriorates in hospital. The film-maker is in denial regarding the gravity of the situation, for how else could she continue with her many day-to-day duties? Her daughter is learning to ride a moped but failing Latin. Her leading man – an American actor essayed by John Turturro – is an egomaniac who can’t speak the language. Her brother (Moretti himself) is stuck at the hospital on leave of absence.
The director's depiction of death as something that happens when – to paraphrase John Lennon – you're busy making plans – is commendable. Still, the film feels a little pedestrian and more than a little disjointed. By striving to capture life's rich pageant and all that, Mia Madre presents the viewer with not one, but competing films. Turturro is a delight yet the screenplay demands that his performance belongs in a rival comedy called Mamma Mia, replete with "the spicy meatballs". Buy works hard to unite disparate tones as she moves between comedy and tragedy but even she can't keep this many plates spinning.
