Personal drama fails to hold 'Mia Madre' together

Nanni Moretti's mother died in 2010, just as the Italian director wrapped work on his film "We Have a Pope."

That experience of loss informs his follow-up, the semi-autobiographical "Mia Madre," which centers on a female stand-in for Moretti.

Margherita (Margherita Buy), also a filmmaker, is directing a drama about the struggle between striking workers and the boorish head of their factory (John Turturro, broadly caricaturing a foolish American movie star).

She and her brother, Giovanni (Moretti), must cope with the unexpected hospitalization of their rapidly declining mother (Giulia Lazzarini).

It's a formula for pathos, yet Moretti avoids weepy melodrama, focusing instead on a side meditation about the slippery nature of reality, which he explores through Margherita's dreams and memories, her mother's dementia and the contrast between Turturro's Barry Huggins and the character he plays in the film-within-a-film.

Although the screenplay (written by Moretti with "Pope" collaborator Francesco Piccolo and Valia Santella of "Honey") keeps the audience nicely off balance - a metaphor, perhaps, for the dissociative state brought on by extreme grief - Moretti's farcical subplot about Huggins' ineptitude is more of an annoyance than a counterbalance to sentimentality.

It feels like pre-emptive comic relief where none is needed.

Buy, who worked with Moretti on "Pope" and other films, is almost mesmerizing enough that none of this matters.

Her expressive face moves from the bemused consternation of an artist who has lost her professional bearings to the sadness of a daughter about to lose her mother. In between, she finds something that feels like sibling jealousy, for Giovanni is the more attentive caregiver.

Considering that the more dutiful child is played by Moretti - but that Margherita is the more human character - it's unclear to what degree each of these roles should be seen as self-serving or a form of artistic atonement.

As considerable as her gifts may be, Buy is ultimately unable to hold "Mia Madre" together.

Yet, it's not nearly as bad as the movie Barry Huggins is starring in.