The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

With only 6 full-length feature films under his belt Paolo Sorrentino has already established himself as one of the cinema's greatest stylists. Indeed, I think Sorrentino will turn out to be one of the great directors and not just in his native Italy. His first foray into English, "This Must Be The Place", was an extraordinary American road- movie and a very worthy addition to both that genre and to those visions of America, (and in that particular case, Ireland as well), as seen through the eyes of an outsider. "The Family Friend" was his third film and it, too, is astonishing. It's about a loan shark, the thoroughly despicable Geremia, (a wonderful performance from Giacomo Rizzo), who could have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel and, though himself in middle-age, lives with his ancient, bed-ridden mother and is on the look-out for a wife or at least a woman. He is a man who takes no prisoners and is certainly not the kind of man you would like to cross. Then one day he meets Rosalba, the daughter of a couple who have borrowed money from him to pay for her wedding, and he is smitten, even though she despises him. This is a dark and very funny film; a variation on "Beauty and the Beast" where the beast really is a beast, a "Phantom of the Opera" where the phantom is as hideous on the inside as he is on the outside, told in the same gloriously broad strokes that Sorrentino has brought to all his films. Critics have compared him to Fellini, (and his most recent film, "The Great Beauty", is a "La Dolce Vita" for the 21st century), but Sorrentino is much too original a talent to be compared to anyone and "The Family Friend" is a true original. Right now I think the only director turning out movies this good, on such a consistent basis, is Paul Thomas Anderson. For starters, they both share the same sense of the absurd though when it comes to the use of music in his movies I think Sorrentino has the edge on all his competitors.

An impressive and stylish film. Rizzo as Geremia the main character is marvellous. He dominates every scene. His simian style shuffle from side to side, his carrier bag swinging gently from side to side hanging from his bad arm. It is through his eyes we see the world and so the criticism of the female flesh on display seems a bit naieve. It's a stylish film shot through with Sorrentino's flamboyant flourishes of camera movement and against the grain cutting, almost too abrupt sometimes. I enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed the Consequences of Love and I recommend both of them. There are moments of revelatory dialogue on the nature of existence which doesn't offend or get tied up in long soliliquay's and quite odd scenes offering a glimpse of darkness in this man's tarnished, cynical world where everything, even a kitsch figurine, has a price. It's an icy film and I did come away from it not really sure what I had learned about the characters or what it was trying to say. I was a little disappointed with the end but that said it's offbeat in so many ways I forgive it it's flaws.

At a superficial level this is Beauty And The Beast with spin. The Beast isn't really handsome and Beauty doesn't really fall in love with him but he is unprepossessing to say the least and she is attractive and maybe even beautiful in the right light. The Beast, Geremia is a tailor by profession who does a little loan sharking on the side and loses no opportunity to waive repayments in return for sexual favours reaching a new low on the day he sleeps with a young bride minutes before her wedding. As if to emphasize the fairytale source the director allows no chance to point up the squalor in which Geremia lives with his bedridden mother to go unexploited whilst contrasting this with a succession of comely young girls. Woven inextricably into all this is a Sting perpetrated by Geremia's best friend, Gino. It's an interesting movie to say the least and a notable follow-up to the same directors The Consequences Of Love but I'm not sure if it will stand subsequent viewings.

I saw this movie in Italia, in original language. It is a repulsive fantasy for an old man, with an eccentric soundtrack and cool camera angles to make it look "arty." In every scene is a female sex object-- a girl's volleyball team, a beauty queen, a new bride, the mother of a newborn, a nude girl sunbathing, two hookers in a bubble bath-- for the main character to ogle, grope, penetrate or threaten. If you like to see a repulsive male lead exploit his way through a cast of females, this is the film for you. Nudity and sex can be done well, but there is no real plot here, just a sequence of grotesque scenes that make you want to walk out and shower after.