In a nutshell, the movie deal with the story of a middle aged man (Pietro) who looses his wife and has to take care of a young daughter (Claudia). Pietro is an executive (although it is difficult to imagine him doing any work at all), with no financial problems. He decides to stop working (leave without pay?) and starts spending all his days sitting outside his daughter's school.The reasons for his decision are obscure, as he does not seem to care much about Claudia, just as he did not seem very involved with his wife. Out of nowhere, a woman whose life he saved the same day of his wife's death, pops out of nowhere and has wild sex with him.Then Claudia asks him to go back to work, as she is probably embarrassed by his freakish behavior and off he goes.Considering the plot, this is a strangely emotionless movie. Watching it, one can easily forget that the Pietro is a widower and Claudia an orphan, who just lost her mother. This odd couple is – allegedly – dealing with grief through denial or perhaps just plain indifference.Besides, this movie suffers from a typical Italian problem: the lack of an ending that justify the storytelling in the first place. Like many other Italian movies, the plot starts believably and ends in a big nowhere. Boring.

The story is surely a good one and the actors all pretty good. The problem I had, and apparently it is a shared view, is that this movie has many unnecessary scenes and superficially shot details which make the result not quite as good as it could have been. A few examples? The first scene with the drowning women is just unbelievable (the sea seems totally calm, it is almost hilarious); the shots in Venice (the only reason I can see is that the film troupe wanted a little break there); the erotic scene between two not so young/not so beautiful actors (pity this scene wasn't between the gorgeous young girl and the brother of the main character, that might have been not necessary either, but at least enjoyable!) the cloying bits with the handicapped; the idealised and quite stereotypical depiction of the Roman school piazza as a nice and friendly environment; the beautiful young girl with the dog so interested in Moretti; even the end titles, with the pelouche monkey name listed... finally the music choice was quite cheesy. Anyway I would lie to say I was not entertained watching it. 6,5/10

Nanni Moretti is not playing his neurotic self this time but he is quite convincing as a man who can't deal with his emotions at all. The good thing about the movie is that all little story lines keep on spinning around him and seem to go nowhere in the end.Just a few things put me off. I don't know if it was necessary to make the person a top manager. He doesn't seem the type to hold that sort of position. And the symbolism of the reversibility of palindromes is a bit cheesy and over the top.But the thing that really put me down is that one sex scene. There is nothing wrong with it in itself but it does not fit in this movie at all. The whole atmosphere changes, it is as if the movie stops, the sex scene starts, and when it's over the movie starts again. Not convincing at all.

Title of the movie that is. There's always bad things happening to people and I'm pretty sure, that you as a reader have experienced grief and loss in your life. Some talk about the yin and the yang of life (let's just say that I personally do also believe in that ... believe).The title character is portrayed wonderfully by an apparently popular Italian actor. I've seen him before, but I'm not as aware of his biography as other reviewers here. Maybe that makes me more open to his performance, I can't say that for sure. But since this is a character piece/movie it does help that the main actor is as good as he is. Of course the support cast, does help him a lot too.Since this movie is all about feelings, it's only normal that near the end there is an "explosion" of emotion ... it's also normal, that some of the female audience members were bedazzled (in a bad way) by that particular scene. And the end is just ... normal. But then again, that's life for you (and me) ...