Margherita (Buy) is directing an earnest social-realist drama starring an unpredictable American actor (Turturro) while caring for her dying mother (Lazzarini) and discovering how she sabotages all her relationships. Initially Moretti satirises filmmaking amusingly. But as real life seeps into the artificiality of the filmmaking and we get to know these people, insights and emotions build beautifully, poignantly on the ties that bind us and the things that matter.
Among the excellent principals, top-billed Turturro enlivens things wonderfully, but the real star, Buy, is magnificent.