The Palme d'Or winner leaves a lasting impression

One Sunday morning Giovanni receives a call from a patient that forces him to postpone a jog with his son Andrea. As a result, Andrea goes diving with some friends and drowns.

The shock waves caused by this sudden, inexplicable tragedy drive deep rifts through the family.

Giovanni is consumed with anger and guilt; Paola is inconsolable; while Andrea's older sister Irene, a model student, starts failing at school.

Without the comfort of religion or each other, the household starts to fall apart. But help comes from an unlikely source: the discovery that Andrea had a secret girlfriend.

Desolation

Had The Son's Room been made in Hollywood, everything would have been resolved by the end in a barrage of tears, hugs and syrupy music.

The beauty of Moretti's movie is that it unflinchingly conveys the heartbreak, misery and desolation of its protagonists without recourse to such sentimental manipulations.

Understated throughout, the film nevertheless contains some strikingly stark images: the crushing finality of the lead lid being screwed down on Andrea's coffin.

There is also the vision of a traumatised Irene standing stock still on a netball court as her team-mates race past her.

Most poignant of all is Giovanni imagining that fateful jog which might have kept his son alive.

Other entries in the Regus London Film Festival - notably Todd Field's In the Bedroom - use the death of a loved one as the catalyst for melodrama and intrigue.

The Son's Room, however, takes a less sensational route, confident in the knowledge that honesty and restraint will leave a far more lasting impression on the audience.

This approach proves justified in the delicate, cathartic conclusion, in which a simple act of kindness to a stranger becomes the link between the family's bleak present and a more hopeful future.

The Son's Room is showing at the London Film Festival on 17 and 19 November.