With only 6 full-length feature films under his belt Paolo Sorrentino has already established himself as one of the cinema's greatest stylists. Indeed, I think Sorrentino will turn out to be one of the great directors and not just in his native Italy. His first foray into English, "This Must Be The Place", was an extraordinary American road- movie and a very worthy addition to both that genre and to those visions of America, (and in that particular case, Ireland as well), as seen through the eyes of an outsider. "The Family Friend" was his third film and it, too, is astonishing. It's about a loan shark, the thoroughly despicable Geremia, (a wonderful performance from Giacomo Rizzo), who could have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel and, though himself in middle-age, lives with his ancient, bed-ridden mother and is on the look-out for a wife or at least a woman. He is a man who takes no prisoners and is certainly not the kind of man you would like to cross. Then one day he meets Rosalba, the daughter of a couple who have borrowed money from him to pay for her wedding, and he is smitten, even though she despises him. This is a dark and very funny film; a variation on "Beauty and the Beast" where the beast really is a beast, a "Phantom of the Opera" where the phantom is as hideous on the inside as he is on the outside, told in the same gloriously broad strokes that Sorrentino has brought to all his films. Critics have compared him to Fellini, (and his most recent film, "The Great Beauty", is a "La Dolce Vita" for the 21st century), but Sorrentino is much too original a talent to be compared to anyone and "The Family Friend" is a true original. Right now I think the only director turning out movies this good, on such a consistent basis, is Paul Thomas Anderson. For starters, they both share the same sense of the absurd though when it comes to the use of music in his movies I think Sorrentino has the edge on all his competitors.

At a superficial level this is Beauty And The Beast with spin. The Beast isn't really handsome and Beauty doesn't really fall in love with him but he is unprepossessing to say the least and she is attractive and maybe even beautiful in the right light. The Beast, Geremia is a tailor by profession who does a little loan sharking on the side and loses no opportunity to waive repayments in return for sexual favours reaching a new low on the day he sleeps with a young bride minutes before her wedding. As if to emphasize the fairytale source the director allows no chance to point up the squalor in which Geremia lives with his bedridden mother to go unexploited whilst contrasting this with a succession of comely young girls. Woven inextricably into all this is a Sting perpetrated by Geremia's best friend, Gino. It's an interesting movie to say the least and a notable follow-up to the same directors The Consequences Of Love but I'm not sure if it will stand subsequent viewings.

I saw this movie in Italia, in original language. It is a repulsive fantasy for an old man, with an eccentric soundtrack and cool camera angles to make it look "arty." In every scene is a female sex object-- a girl's volleyball team, a beauty queen, a new bride, the mother of a newborn, a nude girl sunbathing, two hookers in a bubble bath-- for the main character to ogle, grope, penetrate or threaten. If you like to see a repulsive male lead exploit his way through a cast of females, this is the film for you. Nudity and sex can be done well, but there is no real plot here, just a sequence of grotesque scenes that make you want to walk out and shower after.

Paulo Sorrentino's latest film confirms him as the Antonioni de nos jours. Beautifully shot with an intrusive and fascinatingly eclectic soundtrack, it is nevertheless irritatingly self-conscious and wilfully elliptical. A marvellous, almost Dickensian fable about a miserly loan shark who gets his comeuppance, is somewhat undercut by the director's own preoccupation with style.Geremia is a tailor/loan shark who lives with his invalid mother in a squalid apartment in small town Italy. One day, he is asked by a waiter to pay for the wedding of his daughter, Rossana (played by the goddess-like Laura Chiatti). Geremia instantly falls in love, and wastes no time in exploiting the situation for his own dark purposes. However, Rossana gives him more than he bargained for and in a sub-plot he is betrayed by his only 'friend', Gino.This is very much a film about appearances, and how deceptive they can be. Geremia, whilst grotesquely greedy and physically repulsive, offers some profound insights into what makes other people tick, if not himself. Rossana turns out to be the perfect foil for him, for while he has had to fight for every opportunity he gets, life has been handed to her on a plate. Ultimately they are both motivated, if not undone, by greed and pride in equal measure.Sorrentino, who directed the stylish but more superficial The Consequences of Love, is certainly developing a distinctive style of film-making. The question is whether he can achieve a more successful marriage of the flashy modern rock sensibility with what are fundamentally old-fashioned values in story-telling. It is something which others, notably Sofia Coppola, have recently tried to do, with equally mixed results.