Il Posto

Olmi's modern classic, his second feature, has a hero of Keatonesque ingenuousness - a Candide loosed on the big city (Milan), and surviving in spite of the roaring alienation and enclaves of privilege apparently designed to defeat him. Olmi keeps the scenario firmly anchored in a humane realism, and builds a comedy of feeling based upon the implicit observation of the minutest detail, the subtle shifts of emotion on the human face, the shared memories of adolescent embarrassment. If exercises in applied sadism like 10 pall, go and see a genuine master extract as much sexual charge from the sharing of a coffee spoon, and then real humour from the problem of how to dispose of the cups. A delight, no less acute for being gentle. CPea.