It feels like only yesterday that I was watching writer, director and actor Nanni Moretti zip around Italy on his moped in his delightfully witty and whimsical travelogue, Dear Diary. Amazingly this film, which led to Moretti being dubbed the ''Italian Woody Allen'', was made in 1997, which proves how fast time flies in film as since then I have only seen The Son's Room, which picked up the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 2001.

My Mother (Mia Madre) is the much lauded European director's latest offering and it demonstrates why he is so admired, as anyone who can make a film about two middle-aged siblings watching their mother die interesting deserves a pat on the back. Of course there is quite a bit more to this feature than just the maudlin detailed observation of a peaceful passing in a hospital and it amounts to much more than just sidebars.

One of the siblings, Margherita (Margherita Buy), is a film director and currently shooting what appears to be a worthy, but potentially dull movie about protesting factory workers, while her daughter (Beatrice Mancini) struggles with her schoolwork. Those who know Moretti's work well have suggested that Margherita is a feminised version of the man himself, while the director plays her elder brother, Giovanni, an unmarried man with a mother complex of such magnitude that he cannot cope with the thought of her dying and quits his job. Light relief in all of this comes in the shape of a glittering star turn by John Turturro as Barry Huggins, a hysterical (in temperament not humour), insecure American actor who has the lead in Margherita's film and cannot cope with the dialogue in English, let alone delivering it in Italian. Turturro really is a talent and those who appreciated him most recently as star and director of Fading Gigolo will want to see him in Moretti's rather unusual family drama.