For me the story amounts to this: An emotionally constipated bourgeois professional, in his 40’s, trying to be always good but ineffectual in his relationships, finally must confront real loss.

This is the age group & circumstances of Moretti’s peers, 40 something’s finally getting past the ersatz consumerism of their youth. Have they all been boarded up in “can’t we all get along?” philosophies? Does Moretti need to find some emotional center in his acting to convey a person who lacks an emotional center? Moretti acts as the Everyman for his central characters, here as well as in his other films, none of whom seems to plunge into life but rather ironically nibble at its outter edges until some castrophe interferes.

Yes, it’s possible to see Moretti trying to show these middle age men grasping for salvation in some kind of hearth-centered romance, some good-looking woman dancing for his pleasure to distract him from the alienation he & his peers suffer from. But such salvation won’t come from outside, nor will it come in pretending sports replaces life’s conflicts, nor will it come in the compensatory practices of buying nice things, like shoes for every possible ocassion.

I found Moretti not only perfectly cast for this somewhat sympathetic but finally missing-in-action character but probably easily identifiable as a type by those who have experienced (or failed to experience) life as a complex interplay of various conflicts and failures.

So, my dear Laura, your desire for an actor who can “emote” would defeat the real horror behind this film, which is not the death of the son but the previous death of the main character whose existence seems to be based on a fervent attempt to ignore how he could be truly connected with others.