Director Paolo Sorrentino got his screenwriting break on Antonio Capuano’s five-part anthology, The Dust Of Naples (1998), and proves he still has the gift for juggling multiple storylines in this modern morality tale. Giacomo Rizzo delivers an outstanding display of malevolence as a loan shark whose judgement is clouded by his passion for the daughter of a local bigwig. Her loathing for him unexpectedly dissipates at the very moment she exacts her revenge for the wedding-day humiliation to which Rizzo had subjected her.
This is a grim fairy tale whose exquisite design emphasises the characters’ spiritual emptiness and compensates for the disappointment of a rather rushed resolution.