Preferisco Il Rumore Del Mare

Mimmo Calopresti likes to look long and hard at people who are failing to be entirely honest with each other and themselves. He often does so to the detriment of details like plot structure and visual grace, but so determined is his gaze in this, his third feature, that we forgive him more than one boring filler scene. There is something Gallic about Calopresti's unwavering focus on character rather than incident, and as in his last film The Word Love Exists, there is a French hand in the production too. It may just be a coincidence, but Preferisco... is the only Italian film to have made it into the official Cannes selection this year, where it is screening in Un Certain Regard.

The film is the story of the troubled friendship between two utterly different teenage boys: Rosario, a dark, proud, touchy Calabrian whose mother was killed in a feud between rival clans, and Matteo, the would-be rebel son of a company director played by the stalwart of Italian indie cinema, Silvio Orlando. The gradual unravelling of Orlando's bourgeois certainties, his realisation of his own failure and hypocrisy, is conveyed in a performance that is one of the high points of the film, alongside the brooding intensity of Michele Raso's Matteo.

Calopresti thinks that the Italian media have a downer on Italian cinema. Mostly, they are right to: his own films, for all their flaws (which in this case include occasionally poor lighting and plodding dialogue) are among the few to take the kind of creative risks that make them interesting. Foreign arthouse audiences will find this film just that: interesting, but not quite fascinating. But Calopresti is moving in the right direction, and a good critical reaction at Cannes should boost his stock.