How quickly the spring comes round again. But the signs are all there with the first of March's many film festivals hoving into view. Returning for an eighth year, Cinema Made in Italy is jointly curated by the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and the Italian Cultural Institute in London and will showcase a raft of new features by some of the country's finest film-makers.

Hosted by the Ciné Lumière in Kensington between 7-11 March, the programme includes Ettore Scola's A Special Day (1977), which earned Marcello Mastroianni an Oscar nomination for his performance as a radio announcer who has been sacked by the Fascists for his homosexuality and who strikes up an unexpected friendship with Sophia Loren's neglected housewife, after her husband goes to Rome to witness the 1938 meeting between Mussolini and Hitler.

Perhaps the most familiar name on show this year is Paolo Taviani, who presents Rainbow: A Private Affair as a joint enterprise with his brother, Vittorio, even though he has directed it alone. The screenplay has been based on Beppe Fenoglio's 1963 novel, Una Questione private, which was filmed in 1993 by Alberto Negrin with Rupert Graves starring opposite Céline Beauvallet and Claudio Mazzenga. But, while the octogenarian Tavianis memorably captured the tragic tensions of the civil war between the Fascists and the partisans in The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982), this feels more perfunctory in telling a tale of conflicted loyalty without delving particularly deeply into character psychology.

Somewhere in the Langhe hills during the last days of the Second World War, bookish freedom fighter Luca Marinelli slips away from his comrades to visit the country estate where he had spent many a blissful afternoon in the company of his beloved, Valentina Bellè. As he approaches, the 20 year-old student recalls the hours they spent reading Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and listening to Judy Garland singing `Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. But he finds the house deserted and caretaker Anna Ferruzzo not only informs him that Bellè has gone to Turin, but also that she had been romantically involved with his dashing best friend, Lorenzo Richelmy.

Shattered by the news, Marinelli sets off for camp. However, he learns that Richelmy has been captured by the Black Shirts and is torn whether to leave him to his fate or to find a Fascist prisoner for an exchange. Unfortunately, the only captive he can find is such a sadistic psychotic that the enemy are reluctant to enter into negotiations. Meanwhile, the battle continues, with patrols from each side roaming the Piedmontese countryside and punishing the men, women and children who collaborate with their foe.

Having started their careers with San Miniato, July `44 (1954), a stark recreation of a peasant massacre in the Tuscan town where they were born, the Tavianis have come full circle with this well-meaning, but bland drama. Cinematographer Simone Zampagni makes evocative use of the undulating landscape between Turin and Alba. But the fog effects feel as contrived as some of the sequences of Marinelli stumbling around in a daze, as he tries to reconcile Bellè's loss of purity with his need to do his duty by rescuing Richelmy and putting their shared cause above his tattered dreams. Similarly, the anachronistic switches in Giuliano Taviani and Carmelo Travia's score feel forced.

There are powerful moments amidst the more prosaic sequences, as a woman prays for the success of the aircraft passing overhead on a bombing mission and as the young girl who alone survives the slaughter in her village calmly gets up from among the bodies and slowly wanders indoors. But Marinelli never quite convinces as either the chivalrous suitor or the tormented anti-hero and one is left to conclude that this represents a further diminution in the Tavianis' considerable powers after the patchy medieval portmanteau, Wondrous Boccaccio (2015).

Two very different films focus on Camorra activity in Naples. While Leonardo di Constanzo adopts a flinty social realist approach in The Intruder, Marco and Antonio Manetti take a leaf out of their own Song'e Napule (2013) in Love and Bullets, by taking a musical approach to life in a rundown community in the shadow of Vesuvius.

Fiftysomething social worker Raffaella Giordano is rightly proud of La Masseria, the after-school activity centre she founded with her late husband in a tough part of Naples to give underprivileged children a chance to learn to use their hands in repairing bicycles, painting murals and pots, making papier maché puppets or building a giant robot named Mr Jones from recycled scrap. The mothers of the neighbourhood are grateful to her for standing firm against the local Camorra mobsters, who terrorise and exploit young and old alike with impunity. They also approve of the fact that she has turned a dilapidated shack in the grounds into a refuge for battered wives and those who have been left homeless when their husbands are brutalised or killed.

But they turn on Giordano when she it's discovered that she has offered this sanctuary to Valentina Vannino, whose husband is a Camorra henchman who is being sought by the police for a murder that might well be a case of mistaken identity. Moreover, he was also responsible for young Alessandra Esposito being mute since she witnessed him beating up her father for refusing to hide a cache of weapons. Giordano recognises their concerns when the killer is caught on her premises. But she has noticed how Vannino's tweenage daughter, Martina Abbate, has come out of herself since she has been at La Masseria (although she doesn't know that she has been adopted by a gang of bad boys, who delight in showing her a severed hand in the bushes). Consequently, when the other parents threaten to withdraw, the principal of the affiliated school tries to remind Giordano that she risks losing everything she has worked for to protect Abbate, whom she believes to be as much a victim as any of the non-Camorra kids.

Carefully scripted by Di Constanzo in conjunction with Maurizio Braucci and Bruno Oliviero, this adopts a hard-edged Dardenne-style authenticity until the closing scene, when a party ties up the loose ends with an optimistic flourish that owes more than a little to neorealismo rosa. Nevertheless, Luca Servino's hardscrabble production design and the estimable Hélène Louvart's bristling handheld photography root this in a credible community atmosphere that is splendidly sustained by an ensemble intent on deglamorising the gangster milieu, while also avoiding backstreet stereotypes.

Giordano is particularly solid, as the principled, prickly and compassionately resourceful carer determined to see the good in resistible characters like Vannino and offer scrappy souls like Abbate a chance to avoid falling between two stools. But Di Constanzo (who was a documentarist prior to his 2012 fictional debut, The Interval) is less interested in her moral dilemma and her battle against the odds than in the situation Giordano is fighting against, which sees youngsters being sucked into a cycle of violence from which there often seems to be no escape.

The Scampia district of Naples made famous by Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (2008) has never looked so inviting as it does in Love and Bullets, the latest musical confection from the Manetti Bros. A group of American tourists seems delighted to have experienced the criminality they had witnessed on the screen, as they perform a number about the thrill of being mugged. But the mood is markedly different in a nearby church, as gangland widow Claudia Gerini mourns the passing of her beloved husband, Carlo Buccirosso, the so-called Fish King, who perished at the hands of an assassin dispatched by his rival.

On closer inspection inside the coffin, however, it transpires that the singing corpse belongs to a lookalike shoe salesman (also Buccirosso) and a flashback to five days earlier reveals that Gerini has decided that the time has come to quit Naples for the Caribbean after seeing how James Bond managed to fake his own death in Lewis Gilbert's You Only Live Twice (1967). Unfortunately, there is a flaw in the plan, as nurse Serena Rossi knows that Buccirosso was only shot in the derrière at his mussel factory. But, when the hitman duo nicknamed The Tigers (Giampaolo Morelli and Gennaro `Raiz' Della Volpe) are sent to rub her out, Morelli recognises Rossi as his childhood sweetheart. So, when she reveals her undying love for him on breaking into a new version of the Flashdance song `What a Feeling', he knows that he has to risk his own life (and possibly lose the chance to inherit Buccirosso's empire) by protecting her.

Staged with a gleeful disregard for naturalism, this looks superb, thanks to the craftswomanship of production designer Noemi Marchica and cinematographer Francesca Amitrano. It's also played to the hilt by a spirited cast, with the splendidly over-the-top Gerini and the plucky Rossi standing out. Indeed, the latter's renditions of `What a Feeling' and `Bang Bang', which she delivers while handcuffed to a gun-toting Morelli, are the musical highlights. But a digression to a syndicate family in New York slows down the action, while Mark Hanna's English-language songs lack the zip of those composed by Pivio and Aldo de Scalzi and lyricist Alessandro Nelson Garofalo to flow from the storyline and reveal character psychology.

Moreover, there is the nagging feeling that the Manettis might have produced a more ingratiating film if they hadn't been so pleased with their efforts. There is a self-indulgent brashness to proceedings that misses the affectionate guying that characterised Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows's adaptation of Damon Runyon's stories for the Frank Loesser musical Guys and Dolls, which was so knowingly filmed in 1955 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. This lack of finesse in sequences like the speed boat chase across the Bay of Naples and a dearth of imagination in the choreographing of the song-and-dance segments spoils an otherwise promising concept.

Although Luigi Comencini was one of the masters of the commedia all’italiana genre that proved so popular in the 1960s, daughters Cristina and Francesca have very much followed their own stars in forging their directorial reputations. Having debuted so impressively with Pianoforte (1984), Francesca has produced documentaries like Elsa Morante (1995), Carlo Giuliani, Boy (2002) and In Fabbrica (2007) alongside such acclaimed features as The Words of My Father (2001), Our Country (2006), The White Space (2009) and A Special Day (2012). In adapting her own novel, Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World, however, she rather loses her footing in seeking to examine the break-up of a relationship from the female perspective.

Literature professor Lucia Mascino is finding it cope with the fact that her seven-year romance to fellow academic Thomas Trabacchi has come to an end. Amidst a blizzard of text messages, we learn that they met at a conference and tumbled into bed after an evening of muscular intellectual debate. Yet, even though she appeared to have found her soulmate, Mascino refused to accept that she was happy and she now finds herself bombarding best friend Carlotta Natoli with self-pitying rants and laments about how much she hates and misses Trabacchi.

Her situation is hardly helped by the speed with which he finds a new partner in Camilla Semino Favro, who is several years his junior and seems bent on getting him up the aisle as quickly as possible. But, even though she embarks upon her own unexpected lesbian fling with former student-turned-pole dancer Valentina Bellè, the increasingly scatty Mascino continues to pine about the man who got away.

Despite a committed performance from Mascino, this is not an easy film to negotiate. Writing with Francesca Manieri and Laura Paolucci, Comencini asks the audience to empathise with a rather resistible protagonist, whose Annie Hall-like ditziness is swamped by a self-obsession and garrulousness that makes it hard to appreciate the script's insights into the insecurities and injustices that inform gender politics. She dots the action with monochrome inserts to suggest how female expectations have changed, while an undercurrent of offbeat humour keeps the drama from entirely overheating.

The feminist lecture on the heterosexual capitalist sexual marketplace and the revelation that members of the educated élite as as prone to heartbreak and obsession as those on the lower rungs are well done. But, even though it's possible to sympathise with Mascino, particularly when she bumps into Trabacchi after his wedding, she remains hard work.

Determined to drag the neo-realist tradition into the 21st century, Sebastiano Riso seems to be on a mission to shock complacent Italian audiences. Having chronicled the misadventures of an androgynous Sicilian teenager in Darker Than Midnight (2014), he turns to the provocative topic of baby farming in his sophomore second outing, Una Famiglia. Along with co-writers Stefano Grasso and Andrea Cedrola, Riso has conducted extensive research into black market activity in a country where all forms of surrogacy are still illegal. But, despite listening to wiretapped recordings and studying case notes provided by the Procurator of Grosseto, Riso proves unable to resist melodramatising a story that requires much more Dardenneseque detachment.

While travelling on the Metropolitana di Roma, thirtysomething Micaela Ramazzotti becomes fixated on five year-old twins sitting in the same compartment. Impulsively, she follows them and has to apologise to partner Patrick Bruel for her reckless behaviour when they return to their apartment in a rundown part of the capital and make joyless love. He encourages her to eat a Peruvian leaf to increase her fertility. But Ramazzotti has asked corrupt gynaecologist Fortunato Cerlino to fit a coil, as she is tired of producing babies for Bruel to sell to clients desperate for a child of their own. Yet, rather than seeking to escape from a controllingly abusive lover who denies her a social life to avoid awkward questions about her changing physique, she is keen to start a family of their own.

What Ramazzotto doesn't know, however, is that Bruel is already grooming the vulnerable Matilda De Angelis to her take place. Moreover, he is also negotiating a deal with stage actor Ennio Fantastichini to bypass the law that prevents adoption by gay couples. He is insistent on increasing his price from €50,000 to €80,000, as he is taking an extra risk. But it's Ramazzotto who is the one in peril, as Bruel takes to locking her inside the flat whenever he goes out, which proves potentially fatal when she goes into premature labour.

Despite the obvious critique of the impact of church teaching and state law on the rights and status of Italian women, this is the kind of film that exploits a burning social issue rather than explores it. Riso is primarily interested in the sordid power dynamics between Bruel and Ramazzotto, but hedges his bets in giving the former a disturbed past to explain his boorish chauvinism. At one point, he even turns Pierro Basso's camera away from Bruel's seething aggression by taking the audience on a tour of Paola Bizzarri's carefully arranged set, while the raging argument continues off screen. Such stylistic self-indulgence suggests that the rigorous realism employed elsewhere is merely window dressing, especially as Riso douses the action in dollops of Michele Braga's glutinous score.

Reuniting with the director after playing the put-upon mother in Darker Than Midnight, Ramazzotto achieves a physical gauntness to match her psychological agony. But her commitment merely confirms the contrived nature of the narrative, as does Bruel's struggle to make her tormentor seem more than an oppressively opportunistic misogynist who is so driven by greed that he exercises sexual restraint when visiting a massage parlour. The secondary characters are too sketchy to bring any depth to the subplots. Yet, notwithstanding its dramatic and aesthetic shortcomings, this still packs a soberingly sickening punch.

Echoes of Michelangelo Antonioni and Michael Haneke reverberate around Andrea Pallaoro's Hannah. However, this sophomore follow-up to Medeas (2013) owes most to Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), as it follows Charlotte Rampling's efforts to come to terms with life-changing disclosures. Inspired by a newspaper story, Pallaoro and Orlando Tirado's screenplay keeps close guards over its contextual secrets and will frustrate some with the gnomic nature of its ellipses. But the 71 year-old Rampling gives a fearless performance that is on a par with her remarkable work in François Ozon's Under the Sand (2000) and thoroughly merits her Volpi Cup win at the Venice Film Festival.

At first glance, Rampling and husband André Willms look like any other couple who have spent the best part of half a century together. But, as the eat a silent supper, it becomes clear that this will be the last one they will share together because Willms has to report to prison the following morning. Initially, the nature of his crime is withheld, but Rampling remains loyal and pays him mournful visits in between starting a new job as a cleaner to the affluent and much younger Stephanie Van Vyve and taking acting classes with Fatou Traoré's amateur dramatics troupe. Indeed, these vocal and breathing exercises appear to be her only form of cathartic release, as Rampling goes about her daily business with a quiet determination to go unnoticed by slinking into the background.

She cannot hide away completely, however, as a woman bangs on her door and demands to know whether she feels any shame for her husband's behaviour. The stranger asks to speak to her on a mother-to-mother basis, but Rampling discovers she has been ostracised by son Simon Bisschop when she takes a cake on the subway to his house in the suburbs, only to be denied entry at the gate to her own grandson's birthday party. Seeking refuge in a public bathroom, she breaks down into uncontrollable sobs and her situation gradually deteriorates as she is denied access to her gym and pool and even her beloved spaniel seems to turn against her. Moreover, the discovery of an envelope of photographs shatters her misplaced faith in Willms and Rampling finds herself identifying with a whale that has been washed up on the wintry North Sea coast.

Given the formal rigour of Pallaoro's approach and Rampling's emotional restraint, this last symbol feels a little gauche. But, even though this `existential giallo' keeps the audience at a distance and offers too few psychological insights into Rampling's ordeal, there's much to commend on the technical side. Production designer Marianna Sciveres makes bold use of colour to intrude upon Rampling's cocooned retreat from reality, while Canadian cinematographer Chayse Irvin relies on disconcerting angles in shooting with a mostly static 35mm camera through windows, doors and mirrors. Editor Paola Freddi also keeps things edgy by ending several scenes before they seem to have played out, while the absence of a score locks the viewer into Rampling's world.

Giving little away with her heavy-lidded eyes, Rampling is mesmerising as a woman trying to make sense of her spouse's treachery and the backlash directed at her when she also feels like a victim of Willms's sordid violations. Yet she seeks no easy pity in her bid to carry on in the face of humiliation and shame. There's a slight overlap with her Oscar-nominated display in Andrew Haigh's 45 Years (2015), in which she has to deal with an unwanted confession from husband Tom Courtenay. But this is an even more impressive performance, as Rampling also has to come accept both her own guilt for failing to realise what Willms was up to and the consequences of her accidental complicity.

A couple of the titles showing have already been reviewed in connection with CinemaItaliaUK, including Sergio Castellitto's Fortunata. One of Italy's finest actors, Castellitto has made a number of films with his Dublin-born actress-cum-screenwriter wife Margaret Mazzantini, including Libero Burro (1999), Don't Move (2004), Love & Slaps (2010), Twice Born (2012) and You Can't Save Yourself Alone (2015). Apparently, this drama set in the migrant-packed eastern outskirts of the capital has been inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mama Roma (1962). But, while Jasmine Trinca might have won an award in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes, she is no Anna Magnani, although she is scarcely helped by either Castellitto's direction or Mazzantini's script, which ensure that just about every minor incident spirals into a full-blown crisis.

Opening with a shot of some Chinese women exercising in neat rows in the ruins of the ancient Alexandrina Aqueduct, the story centres on Jasmine Trinca, a freelance hairdresser who is having trouble raising her spirited eight year-old daughter, Nicole Centanni. She hates school and would much rather help Trinca and long-haired tattoo artist Alessandro Borghi work on the salon they are about to open. However, as well as being a valued childhood friend, Borghi is also an addict, who has problems coping with the antics of his mother, Barbara Schygulla, a German actress who is suffering from Alzheimer's.

Trinca is divorced from brutish security guard Edoardo Pesce, who is furious that their social worker has received so many complaints about Centanni's behaviour that they have ordered her to visit psychiatrist Stefano Accorsi. He smashes a bottle in the sink and forces himself upon Trinca, who puts up no resistance, as the crestfallen Borghi watches from a window across the courtyard of their soulless tenement block. But Pesce ducks the appointment and Trinca tries to answer the questions that Accorsi puts to her Centanni to protect her. He understands her concern, but reassures her that he is only trying to help and he is delighted when Centanni brings him a drawing of a fish to her second session.

Left alone, Accorsi asks Centanni about her life with her mother and is amused when she reveals that Trinca talks in her sleep and sings out of tune. He quickly gains her trust and persuades her that spitting and throwing stones aren't the only ways to respond to a problem. Bothered by having her secrets shared with a stranger, Trinca gazes from her window at a group of Muslim men praying at the Aqueduct. But she has too many clients to linger and she visits chubby bride-to-be Emanuela Aurizi, well-heeled Chinese neighbour Jaclyn Parry and feisty friend Liliana Fiorelli before returning to crash out in the bed she shares with her daughter.

One sunny afternoon, Trinca leaves Centanni eating an ice lolly with Schygulla outside a café, while she works out her lottery numbers with Borghi. She is amused by how seriously he takes his system. But, when she checks on Centanni, she is horrified to see she has disappeared and a friend at the playground tells her that Pesce has taken her away. Trinca confronts him, but he insists that Centanni spends the afternoon at a barbecue with her cousins and Trinca has to tell Accorsi why she has missed her appointment. He asks Trinca to stay and discovers that her addict father died when he was only 27 and he recognises the strength she has had to show from a young age in order to survive. But Trinca doesn't want pity and swears that everything will be better once her divorce is finalised and her shop opens.

At their next session, Accorsi asks Centanni to select some plastic animals to place in a sand pit he has in his office. He is keen to see how she would populate a fantasy. But, sensing something between Accorsi and Trinca, Centanni asks to go to the bathroom and returns in the arms of Pesce, who criticises Trinca for allowing their daughter to go barefoot in a clinic where there could be needles on the floor. Bristling with machismo, Pesce introduces himself to Accorsi and goes out of his way to stress that Trinca still belongs to him, even though she is trying to bleed him dry and is useless at everything except oral sex.

Trinca is embarrassed and Accorsi is repelled by Pesce's boorish display. But, when she takes Centanni for her next appointment, she is astonished to discover that Accorsi has discharged her. She takes the train to her next appointment and is worn down by Centanni asking whether she would wear a burqa and why she takes cash for jobs when she should be paying tax. However, she is shocked when Centanni jumps off the train and the doors close before she can get to the platform. Fuming with her daughter after she accuses her of stealing Accorsi away from her, Trinca bursts into his session with Gianluca Spaziani (who has Down Syndrome) and gives him a piece of her mind for abandoning Centanni and causing her to spit like Linda Blair in The Exorcist (1973). He chases after her when she storms into a nearby park and tries to explain that he cancelled the treatment because he has feelings for her. As Spaziani pelts them with pebbles, they kiss passionately on the riverbank and, for once, Trinca is left speechless.

A few days later, Trinca shows Borghi the neon sign for their shop. She has named it `Lucky' and is sure that good times are just around the corner. They go to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate Schygulla's birthday and Accorsi comes along with Spaziani. He gives Centanni a present, but she can feel his eyes straying to Trinca and she simmers with resentment. Borghi also picks up on the vibe, even though Schygulla begins quoting Antigone to Accorsi, while refusing to let go of his hand. When Borghi tries to intervene, his mother pours her drink over him and he wonders why he bothers when she ignores the candles on her birthday cake and he has to blow them out for her.

Watching Borghi fill in lottery tickets, Accorsi asks to see the pills he is taking. He tells him he is dicing with death and recommends something less risky, but Borghi is only interested in his numbers and warns Accorsi that Trinca is fragile. Yet, he agrees to take care of Centanni when the pair go away for a couple of days on the back of Accorsi's motorcycle and they ride through a huge puddle. He takes her to his home city of Genoa and describes how his father deserted his mother and set up an illegal gambling den in Ivory Coast. When he tracked him down, he could barely remember his own son's name and, yet, Accorsi takes Trinca to the casino, where they win before bopping around their room to Chubby Checker singing `Let's Twist Again'.

While they make love, Borghi tells Centanni the story of Antigone. He asks if she likes tragedies and, while his attention is elsewhere, she heads to the roof and falls from the same ladder she had once seen Schygulla climbing. Trinca speeds back to Rome and finds Pesce hurling abuse at Borghi in the hospital corridor, while Centanni lies in a neck brace clutching one of the plastic figures from Accorsi's sand pit. Determined to make Trinca pay for her selfishness, Pesce seeks custody of his daughter and shows the female judge a phone clip of Centanni complaining about Accorsi and Trinca kissing. Forced to admit that she left her child with unfit persons to enjoy a romantic weekend, Trinca loses Centanni, who refuses to speak to her.

Worried that she will lose the shop because Borghi is in a bad way, Trinca asks Accorsi to get him some medication. While they are making love, however, Borghi takes Schygulla for a walk and she spouts the lines from the Sophocles play she had once headlined. As they sit by the river, she uses her fingers to turn his lips into a smile. But, as we see Schygulla's black umbrella floating away on the water, Trinca learns that Borghi has been charged with drowning his mother and she rushes to the police station to see him. Accorsi tries to hold her back, but she promises Borghi the best lawyer she can get because she knows he would never harm his mother in his right mind. In return, he hands her a lottery ticket and urges her to play, as he knows he has got the right numbers.

As they leave the police station, Accorsi tells Trinca that he has to take a step back from her because her world is out of control and he doesn't want to be sucked into the madness. She accuses him of failing to write a prescription that might have helped Borghi and he urges her to shut up because she could destroy his career. But, as she bellows at Accorsi, she recalls Borghi telling her something about her father drowning when she was eight years old and the suppressed memory comes bubbling to the surface, as Trinca remembers going to the beach with her father and letting him drown in the shallow tide after he had shot up. With her eyes staring wildly, she asks Accorsi what a child was supposed to do in that situation, but she feels guilt at doing nothing to help a man who could no longer help himself.

Accorsi goes looking for Trinca in her neighbourhood, but there is no sign of her. She has given the keys of the salon to Parry because she can't repay her loan and her mood is as bleak as the downpour that soaks the Chinese women exercising in the square. But she is not alone in her misery, as Centanni doesn't want to live with her father and Pesce bursts into Trinca's flat brandishing a gun because he would rather kill her than let her triumph. He doesn't shoot, of course, and Trinca storms out.

She is next seen speeding along in a motorboat with Accorsi to identify Schygulla's body, which has finally washed ashore. She thanks him for getting treatment for Borghi and asks if he played the lottery numbers (which we had earlier seen him checking over news footage of migrants being rescued from a boat in the Mediterranean). Trinca thinks it's a shame things didn't work out, as she would have been good for Accorsi. Instead, she remembers watching her father float face down in the swell and strips naked to wade into the water. Turning to the shore, she sees her eight year-old self realising there was nothing she could do to help him and wandering off to play. Striding purposefully, Trinca is reunited with Centanni and she sweeps her into her arms, as the film ends on a defiantly optimistic freeze frame.

Played to the hilt by a willing cast, this can't be faulted for its conviction. But, for all the steely determination demonstrated by Jasmine Trinca, the wistful sadness displayed by Hanna Schygulla and the tainted innocence shown by Nicole Centanni, the scenario lurches from one contrivance to another without the slick direction being unable to disguise its glaringly melodramatic nature. Far too many scenes teeter on the verge of histrionic soap opera rather than provocative social realism, with the selection of power ballads and up-tempo pop songs on the soundtrack reinforcing the sense that this is novelettish pulp masquerading as an artistic treatise on fate, memory, masculinity and the bond between parents and children.

When not reducing the male characters to ciphers, Castellito and Mazzantini stuff the action with references to the migrant population of this part of Rome and allow Centanni to chuck in the odd casually racist remark. Yet they avoid making their own definitive statement on the situation and leave viewers pondering whether they think the influx of new cultures is a good thing or whether Italians like Trinca are being socially and economically squeezed by their presence. Film-makers are not duty bound to express opinions. But, having taken such pains (in conjunction with cinematographer Gian Filippo Corticelli) to show Chinese women and Muslim men in such an historical setting as the Alexandrina Aqueduct, it feels more than a little disingenuous to skate on by without considering the wider significance of the image.

Another CinemaItaliaUK reheat is Cinderella the Cat. Following on from his acclaimed 2013 debut, The Art of Happiness, director Alessandro Rak has teamed with Ivan Cappiello, Marino Guarnieri and Dario Sansone to produce a slyly satirical musical that draws on a 1976 scenario by musician-cum-dramatist Roberto de Simone to return the familiar fable to the Naples of 17th-century author Giambattista Basilere. Lively, raucous and stuffed with anti-establishment barbs, this is clearly aimed more at adults than children.

As the opening pastiche of the Giornale Luce newsreel reveals, inventor Vittorio Basile (Mariano Rigillo) lives aboard the cruise ship Megaride in the Bay of Naples with his young daughter, Mia (who has just lost a shoe on the labyrinth of gangways), and her bodyguard, Primo Gemito (Alessandro Gassmann). Basile is about to launch the Science and Memory Hub that will provide thousands of jobs and help regenerate a rundown part of the city. But Gemito has misgivings about living on a vessel full of holographic ghosts and dares to question Basile's decision to marry singer Angelica Carannante (Maria Pia Calzone), who has six children and is far too friendly with the shady Salvatore Lo Giusto (Massimiliano Gallo).

In a nearby cabin, he is plotting with Angelica to murder Basile as soon as they are pronounced husband and wife. She fails to see why the kindly boffin needs to die, but Lo Giusto wants him out of the way to he can use his influence over Angelica to get his hands on Basile's fortune. In order to give himself the best alibi, he performs a song for his old friend and his new bride before slipping away (during a blizzard of popping flashbulbs) to gun him down. Mia sees her father's body and is distraught when Angelica declares that Gemito is fired and that she will take care of her along with her own children, Anna (Federica Altamura), Barbara (Chiara Baffi), Carmen (Francesca Romana Bergamo), Luisa (also Bergamo), Sofia (Anna Trieste) and Luigi (Ciro Priello).

Fifteen years later, the fireworks lighting up the Neapolitan sky have been replaced by ash drifting in from Vesuvius. The Megaride is now a burlesque cabaret club called the Ace of Clubs, where Angelica's kids perform and service the wealthiest patrons. As they drive to the waterfront in their flashy cars, Gemito reports back to the commissioner (Renato Carpentieri) about a consignment of crates bound for the club. He is working undercover to find out how Lo Giusto (who know calls himself `The King') smuggles cocaine into the city. On arriving at the jetty with his confederates, James (Gino Fastidio) and The Chinaman (Huang Xu), Gemito is horrified to see the latter gunned down by a henchmen named Scarface (Enzo Gragnaniello).

As a treat for ratting out their treacherous colleague, Gemito and James are given passes for the club balcony and the latter warns his friend that he might get a surprise if the cross-dressing Luigi comes to play with him. Fresh from warning Mia (who lives in the hold with a grey cat) that she had better buck up her ideas before she turns 18 tomorrow, Angelica sings about wasted love to an appreciative audience, while Lo Giusto and his tame scientist Cozza (Antonio Brachi) demonstrate to potential buyers how they can make designer shoes that can be exported without any questions asked out of pure cocaine.

Eager to avoid Barbara's ministrations, Gemito tries to push past her and gets stabbed in the shoulder. He almost gets shot by Luigi when he comes to his sister's aid and Gemito has to take cover in the communications room. Here, he manages to get a message to the commissioner before he is cornered by Barbara and Luigi, who shoots him and Gemito plunges into the depths of the hold. Mia watches him fall and goes rushing to his aid, just as Lo Giusto takes to the stage to deliver a mockingly affectionate paean to Naples, which he plans to turn into the Las Vegas of Southern Italy the moment he gets his hands on Basile's wealth.

Pulling Gemito out of the shallow water at the bottom of the hull, Mia is surprised that he knows her, even though she recognises him from the holograms that keep bringing past events flickering back to life around the liner. He is troubled by the fact that Mia no longer speaks and gives her the lost shoe that he had found on the night her father was murdered and promises to deliver her from her nightmare. But she is called away by Anna, who is furious that she has not tidied her room and she grabs Mia by the scruff of the neck and drags her to Angelica's cabin. She does not wish to be disturbed, however, as Lo Giusto has been away for two years and she is keen to show him how devoted she has been in her loneliness. He teases her that he has been working to make them rich beyond avarice, but she feels a pang of regret because the caged blackbird that sits on her dressing-table has not chirped since her last wedding day.

She is distraught to hear the bird sing the moment it is left alone with Mia, who has so entranced Lo Giusto that he orders Angelica to move her to a plush cabin and find her a stylish dress. Anna is furious that her stepsister is being treated like a princess, but her mother reminds her that The King's word is final. But even she cannot suspect the depths of his treachery, as he makes plans to ditch her and marry Mia in order to get his hands on Basile's fortune. He kneels at Mia's feet and promises to find her the most beautiful shoes she has ever seen and she nods watchfully when he reveals what he expects from her in return.

While blimps hover over the city announcing the forthcoming nuptials, Gemito sets off with a back-up crew to raid the ship. Elsewhere, as Mia luxuriates in a bubble bath, Angelica discovers that the wedding slippers that Lo Giusto has had made for his bride don't fit her feet. She checks to see if an honest mistake has been made. But he brushes her aside in the corridor and ridicules her for wasting 15 years of her life. As she orders her offspring to kill Mia, however, she sees a hologram of Lo Giusto gunning down her father and she hurriedly changes out of her wedding dress and scurries out of the cabin before The King's henchmen can force her on to the stage.

Unfortunately, she runs into both the heavies and her step-siblings and watches on as they gun each other down. As Anna lies dying, she pleads with her mother to kill Mia as she has cursed them all. But she allows her to escape in order to set free the blackbird that had been a gift from her father. With menacing serenity, Angelica heads into the fuel store to blow up the liner, while Lo Giusto sings a song for his guests about being an indestructible weed. He is furious when Gemito turns on the tannoy system to urge everyone to abandon the vessel before she explodes. But the cop prevents Mia from bludgeoning the crook to death with Barbara's gun and they just manage to jump overboard before the explosion rips the hull apart.

Closing with a sinuous camera move along the seabed, as the dramatis personnae are identified, this is a combustibly brutal ending to a picture whose latent violence had previously been simmering beneath the surface. Rak and his co-directors certainly capture the imagination with the atmospheric setting and the inspired use of the luminous spectral photosweeps, which have been superimposed on to the two-dimensional anime-like artwork using a special stereoscopic software. The vocal work is also admirable, with Maria Pia Calzone and Massimiliano Gallo (riffing on ex-ship crooner Silvio Berlusconi) delivering their character-driven musical numbers with evident relish.

But their story meanders in places and sometimes strains too hard to squeeze in the Cinderella and the feline references. The Ugly Sisters are particularly unsettling, with the casual cracks about Luigi's sexuality sitting as uncomfortably as James's racist impersonation of the Chinaman's pronunciation of the letter `r'. Nevertheless, this is a boldly conceived and slickly realised noir, which would make a fine midnite movie double bill alongside Gabriele Marinetti's They Call Me Jeeg Robot (2015).