When you’re done with the agitated indie flicks and hinterland documentaries, and ready for a high level of grown-up movie-making, Tenderness is a title for you.

The latest effort from Stolen Children’s Gianni Amelio looks at two damaged Italian families who share a courtyard in the centre of old Naples. Things start with a sad-eyed translator (terrific Giovanna Mezzogiorno) visiting her aged dad in the hospital. We think he’s in a coma, and that we’ll follow her home. But the old guy (renowned theatre director Renato Carpentieri) was just playing possum, and the movie really centres on him. A cranky retired lawyer who has shut out the world, he gets quietly entranced by the lively young family that moves in across from his kitchen in the big, noble building his family used to own.

With novelistic detail, the tale is so carefully mounted and beautifully photographed, you can forgive it for going slightly off the rails after some bad things happen. Look for one incendiary scene with ’80s star Greta Scacchi (The Coca-Cola Kid), an Australian-Brit who, it turns out, was born in Milan.