Le Fate Ignoranti (Ignorant Fairies)

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * )

A return attraction from last year's Italian film festival, this slight but well-worked melodrama doesn't break any new ground, stylistically or narratively.

But it is charmingly offbeat and sustained by a generous and intelligent central performance from Buy as Antonia, a woman forced to re-evaluate her life when she is widowed by a sudden and shocking accident. It's not hard to understand what she saw in the late Massimo; the cleverly contrived first scene, in particular, ensures he makes a strong impression for the few minutes he's on screen.

The trouble is she's not the only one who fell for him. Sifting through his belongings, she comes across a painting given to him by a lover - a man called Michele (Accorsi), and her world falls apart.

Ozpetek, who co-wrote, crafts a story which allows the emotional lives of a large ensemble to interlock. When her mother gives voice to a long-repressed resentment that Antonia "got off at the first stop" by marrying a childhood sweetheart, we sense her bitter disappointment at her own life.

But the comment strikes a nerve: Antonia, who works as a doctor in a sexual health clinic, has devoted herself to others and, left alone, has no idea how to love herself.

Gradually, Michele's world - a colourful demi-monde of transsexuals, tarts and Turks who gather weekly for a shared meal - becomes Antonia's and the woman who despairs that "I lost my husband twice" begins a new relationship with him through his oddball friends.

The unfortunate title aside (the reference is to a specific plot point and "fairies" plainly doesn't have the same double entendre in Italian), the film achieves a solid emotional plausibility, although it's worth recording that the characterisations have been derided as stereotypes by some gay critics.

The story frays a little in the last reel, too, and there's a sense that Ozpetek doesn't know what to do with it.

But filming in his own street (the bohemian Ostiense district of Rome), and working with fabled designer Bruno Cesari (The Last Emperor), he has concocted an unusual and charming entertainment.

Cast: Margherita Buy, Stefano Accorsi

Director: Fernando Ozpetek

Running time: 103 mins

Rating: M (offensive language, sexual themes)
Screening: Lido, Berkeley from Thursday