I Can See It In Your Eyes

Valia Santella's feature debut is an assured piece, focussing on the microcosm of family life. Margherita (Stefania Sandrelli) is an ageing-but-glamorous singer, cocooned in a world of people who adore her, with the exception of her daughter Chiara (Teresa Saponangelo), who finds her self-centred ways hard to handle.

After a vocal cord operation, Margherita finds herself in so many forms of denial, it's amazing she isn't hiding her head under a blanket. Not only is she facing - or rather failing to face - the fact that she may never sing again, she also finds herself at the end of an adulterous affair.

In a bid to bolster her self-esteem, she tries to reconnect with divorcee Chiara and her granddaughter Lucia (Camilla de Nicola), although she brings a brand of denial to this relationship that could have devastating consequences for them all.

Although I Can See It In Your Eyes gets off to a slow start, once it gathers momentum the tension builds nicely. The performances are all excellent, with Saponangelo perfectly capturing the fragility of a single mum trying to do what's best for her family, while Sandrelli manages to avoid slipping into a diva caricature - always letting us see the brittleness and humanity beneath Margherita's self-obssession.

Where this film really scores, however, is in the careful scripting of Lucia. She is a proper little girl, never saying anything a youngster wouldn't and avoiding all the usual Hollywood cliches and Santella elicits a believable and natural performance from little Camilla de Nicola. Although the story is a little slight and lacking early impetus, the performances raise this movie's game considerably.