THE wider Australian audience has seen few films by Italian writer (21 credits) and director (24 credits) Nanni Moretti.

His latest, in which middle-aged film director Margherita (Margherita Buy – pronouncing that family name invites a variety of alternatives) confronts a busy schedule of professional, emotional, family, creative and personal problems, suggests that Australia has been missing out on something good. But in some ways flawed.

It is not for you or me to challenge the merits or shortcomings of Moretti’s skills as a director. Suffice it to say that while its staging bloopers may niggle, they are not so grave as to render the film unworthy in toto.

Margherita’s mother Ada lies in hospital surrounded by the paraphernalia which that experience requires. Having earned her living teaching Latin, Ada wants Margherita’s teenaged daughter Livia to learn it as well.

On the set of a movie about a dispute between workers and employers, Margherita awaits the arrival from Hollywood of actor Barry Huggins (John Turturro, whose native command of Italian enables him to deliver his lines with bilingual fluency).

As the plot develops, the interaction between these two forms its backbone. Barry’s self-esteem, outweighing his professional capabilities, is the foundation for most of the film’s humour. But it is Ada who provides its central emotional chord. As well as the film’s final line that says much about herself.

At Palace Electric