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Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) first encountered Mussolini (Filippo Timi) in Trent in 1907, when he was a socialist agitator enraging a public meeting by claiming that God doesn't exist. They met again in Milan, seven years later, when he expediently kissed her in the street while fleeing from troops after a demonstration and she later slipped her address into his hand during a mêlée outside her beauty salon. That night, they became lovers and, in 1915, she bore him a son, Benito Albino Mussolini. She also sold everything she owned to bankroll Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper that denoted the future dictator's shift from left-wing pacifism to the militarism and irredentism that would form the cornerstones of his political philosophy.

However, following his service in the Great War and steady rise to power at the head of the Fascist Party, Mussolini disowned the boy and denied ever having married Dalser. Indeed, such was his desire to protect his reputation as a family man with former waitress Rachele Guidi (Michela Cescon) that he placed Dalser under virtual house arrest with her sister Adelina (Francesca Picozza) and her husband Riccardo Paicher (Fausto Russo Alesi) before consigning her to the asylum at Pergine Valsugana and entrusting their son to the custody of henchman Giulio Bernardi (Paolo Pierobon).

Despite countless letters to the political and religious authorities to be reunited with her child, Dalser failed to elicit a sympathetic hearing outside Dr Cappelletti (Corrado Invernizzi), the psychiatrist whose suggestion of toning down her protests she disregarded, and the anonymous nun who allowed her to make a desperate bid for freedom following the signing of the Lateran Treaty between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI. She died on the Venetian island of San Clemente, while Benito Albino (who had joined the navy after college) perished five years later in the sanatorium of Mombello, at the age of just 26.

With Mezzogiorno exuding betrayed adoration and distorted intelligence and Timi impressing as both the ambitious firebrand and his disoriented adult son, this would be a remarkable story. But Bellocchio imbues it with cinematic brilliance by borrowing from contemporary film styles to reinforce the sense of period and the magnitude of the melodrama. He anotates archive material from the silent era with on-screen captions, while also presenting Mussolini exclusively in newsreel footage after Dalser sees him for the last time in a hospital ward after he was wounded by a grenade. In conjunction with production designer Marco Dentici and cinematographer Daniele Cipri, Bellocchio also recreates the glossy calligraphist look that would characterise much Italian cinema into the 1940s and this mood of unrepentant classicism is emphasised by Carlo Crivelli's symphonic score, which sweeps from effusions of arch grandiosity to moments of affecting intimacy.

The action is similarly strewn with exceptional set-pieces, such as Mussolini causing a riot in a cinema by heckling a newsreel as the pianist belts out his bellicose accompaniment and Dalser climbing the grille of Pergine's enormous arched window's to toss hopeless missives into the snowy night. But Bellocchio never loses sight of the human drama and his exploitation of the confined spaces that Dalser inhabits as both a secret mistress and a detested inconvenience contrasts tellingly with the vast crowds and vulgar monuments used to characterise Mussolini's hucksterish opportunism, voracity for power and dread of mediocrity.

Returning to the Sicily that was the scene of both his childhood and Cinema Paradiso (1988), Giuseppe Tornatore has created in Baarìa an epic that is simultaneously intimate and operatic.

At times, the scope and scale threaten to swamp shepherd's son Francesco Scianna, as events move from the rise of Mussolini in the 1920s to the uneasy coalitions of the 1980s. But Enrico Lucidi's camerawork and Ennio Morricone's equally swooping score reinforce the mix of grandeur and parochialism that buffet the town of Bagherìa in a manner that variously recalls Federico Fellini's Amarcord (1973), Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976) and Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979), as well as Marco Tullio Giordana's more recent chronicle of turbulent Italian history, The Best of Youth (2003).

The action opens fantastically, as the young Scianna (played by Davide Viviani) is sent to buy cigarettes and runs so hard down the narrow cobbled streets that he takes off and flies above the once-remote community that has since become a victim of Palermo's suburban sprawl. This flight of fancy sets the tone for the breathless saga that follows, with Tornatore seemingly being more interested in packing in incident and guest cameos by the likes of Monica Bellucci, Luigi Lo Cascio, Angela Molina, Donatella Finocchiaro and Raoul Bova than he is in getting inside the heads of his protagonists. Nevertheless, the confidence of his approach succeeds in sweeping the viewer along, even though little effort is made to increase their knowledge of national and local events like the postwar rise of the Christian Democratic Party and the Salvatore Giuliano massacre.

At the centre of the maelstrom is Francesco Scianna, who becomes a Communist after watching father Gaetano Sciortino being pushed around by landowner Franco Lollo and spends years away in France and the Soviet Union before returning to secure a seat on the town council that gives him a say in how entrenched socio-economic iniquities can be reformed. But his political preoccupations keep him away from Margareth Madè, the childhood sweetheart he had married against the wishes of her parents and whom he seemingly only sees to enlarge their family and provide her with a sense of domestic purpose.

Thanks to Maurizio Sabatini's production design, Tornatore admirably captures an authentic sense of time and place, with details like the artist incorporating portraits of his neighbours into a church fresco and the visitation by director Alberto Lattuada (Enrico Salimbeni) and actor Alberto Sordi (Alessandro Di Carlo) to make a neo-realist film being particularly adept. Tornatore also keeps the camera moving and makes imposing use of his 35,000 extras to enhance the bustling business that distracts from occasional inconsequentiality of the vignettes and the recurring lack of character depth.

In truth, Baarìa is overlong and a little confused, while much of its nostalgia feels artificial and trite. Yet this is the kind of glorious failure that involves the audience in the lives of commonplace characters, who are aware of Fascism, Communism the Church and the Mafia, but who refuse to let ideology or institution interfere with the endless struggles and fleeting pleasures of everyday existence.

Another Sicilian director, Luca Guadagnino, turns his attention to the upper echelons of Italian society in I Am Love, an intense study of passion and position that could be the serious Milanese cousin of Ferzan Ozpetek's Loose Cannons, as re-imagined by Luchino Visconti, Douglas Sirk and Michelangelo Antonioni, and with a homage to Alfred Hitchcock included for good measure. The overall effect is dazzling, with the ensemble performances matching the exquisiteness of Yorick Le Saux's photography, Francesca Balestra Di Mottola's décor and John Adams's score. But there's something self-conscious about such conspicuous excellence, especially as it keeps the emotional tenor at an operatic pitch that makes the action seem increasingly histrionic.

In the middle of his birthday lunch, textile tycoon Gabriele Ferzetti announces that he is handing over control of the family business to his son Pippo Delbono and grandson Flavio Parenti. He dies soon after delivering his bombshell and Delbono is left to mourn with mother Marisa Berenson, Russian wife Tilda Swinton, lesbian artist daughter Alba Rohrwacher and resentful younger son, Mattia Zaccaro. However, the evening is interrupted by the arrival of chef Edoardo Gabbriellini, who has brought a cake to patch a feud with Parenti, with whom he is about to open a restaurant in San Remo. But, rather than healing wounds, the gesture starts a new tear in the family fabric, as Swinton is sufficiently smitten to pursue Gabbriellini around the city in a tracking sequence that rivals Brian De Palma in its Hitchcockian fealty.

Suddenly emancipated from her role as Delbono's trophy spouse, Swinton abandons the trappings of her luxurious lifestyle and encourages Rohrwacher to follow her artistic instincts and her heart. But Parenti discovers her affair with Gabbriellini, just as the economic downturn spells disaster for the company, and the tragic consequences cause Swinton to become increasingly involved with daughter-in-law Diane Fleri and housekeeper Maria Paiato.

Emphasising the sensuality of everything from cuisine and colour to enveloping snow and summer light, Guadagnino has created a film of rare texture and beauty. His use of interior and landscape is exceptional, with sequences inside villas and chapels being as evocative as those set in winding streets and hillside fields. He also shifts effortlessly between classicism and experimentation, as he examines the way power changes hands within the fracturing family.

Yet, while he rightly asserts that the mores and misdeeds of the rich are as deserving of sympathetic scrutiny as those of the poor, Guadagnino never quite manages to disguise the novelettishness of the storyline. Thus, no amount of actorly gravitas and technical mastery can raise this above the status of superior soap. Borrowing sapiently from such sources as Madame Bovary, The Leopard and Lady Chatterly's Lover, this is intelligent and engrossing. But, for all its elegance and urgency, it's never great art.

The same has to be said for Johann Sfar's Gainsbourg, a `fairytale' account of an `heroic life' (as the picture's subtitle and directorial credit would have it) rather than a warts-and-all biopic of the chansonnier who became both a French cultural icon and the nation's favourite enfant terrible in the 1960s. Eric Elmosnino couldn't be better cast and Sfar (who comes to cinema from graphic novels) is to be commended for seeking to enliven the action and provide psychological insights through animation and puppetry. But too many of the peccadilloes that coloured Serge Gainsbourg's reputation during his later years have been overlooked and Sfar dwells overlong on the fabulist alter ego personified by Doug Jones.

He starts well, however, with the scenes in which Lucien Ginsburg (Kacey Mottet-Klein) - the son of Russian-Jewish parents Joseph and Olga (Razvan Vasilescu and Dinara Droukarova) - demands his yellow star in Nazi-occupied France and then gets chased by a grotesque anti-Semitic caricature that comes down from a wall to persecute him having a poignancy and power that is tempered by the playfulness that would come to characterise Gainsbourg's work as a painter, composer, performer, film-maker and bon vivant.

The segment in which the newly dubbed Serge plays café piano to pay his way through art school is also lively, especially after he makes the acquaintance of Left Bank celebrities Boris Vian (Philippe Katerine) and Juliette Gréco (Anna Mouglalis). But Sfar then develops a tendency to trot out the women who were seduced by the charm that always compensated for what Gainsbourg considered to be his ugly mug and use a musical number to illustrate their relationship. Consequently, we see him duetting with Gréco on `La Javanaise', Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta) on `Comic Strip', France Gall (Sara Forestier) on `Les Sucettes' and Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon) on the infamous `Je t'aime…moi non plus'.

The impersonations are fine and Sfar successfully conveys the ingenuity of Gainsbourg's lyrics and the audacity of his reggae version of `La Marseillaise'. But too little is contextualised or examined in depth. Thus, when the hellraising and trend-setting give way to dissolution and provocation, we know too little about Serge the man (apart from the lifelong concerns about his looks and Jewishness) to appreciate fully the tragedy of a decline that saw Gainsbarre (as he dubbed himself) increasingly reliant on shock stunts like torching bank notes on television and recording `Lemon Incest' with his then 13 year-old daughter Charlotte (which is conspicuous by its absence here).

So, while it's easy to admire the slickness of Guillaume Schiffman's cinematography, Christian Marti's sets and Pascaline Chavanne's costumes and enthuse about the brilliance of Elmosnino's performance, it's more difficult to get to grips with Gainsbourg's iconoclasm or what his various collaborators-cum-conquests actually meant to him. Mouglalis, Casta and Forestier (who is hilarious as the yé-yé singer oblivious to the sauciness of the lollipop lyrics that would do much to damage her squeaky clean image) are all splendid. As is Lucy Gordon, the Oxford High School student who sadly would commit suicide shortly after completing her scenes. But the cast's physical and vocal precision only emphasises that this is a meticulous and respectful biography when, perhaps, something more squalid and subversive might have been in order.

Staying in France, an attention-seeking caper misfires in British director Andrew Kötting's drama, Ivul. Peeved at the prospect of being left to entertain twins Manon and Capucine Aubriot when older sister Adélaïde Leroux leaves to study in Russia, teenager Jacob Auzanneau allows his emotions to get the better of him when she permits him a moment of playful intimacy and they are caught in flagrante by their father, Jean-Luc Bideau. Feeling aggrieved at being banished from the house, Auzanneau takes up residence on the roof. But, having seen Leroux depart, he vows never to set foot on the ground again and clambers his way through the treetops into the woods, where soft-hearted mother Aurélia Petit attempts to leave him some provisions. However, as winter sets in, Auzanneau is forced to venture further afield to glean the food and clothing he needs to survive the biting temperatures.

Inspired by Kötting's relationship with his own father, this highly individual drama was originally set on the Isle of Jura before fiscal dictates necessitated a French-speaking transfer across the Channel. As with This Filthy Earth (2002), a weighty literary pall is cast over proceedings, which become increasingly overwrought after Bideau is left bedridden by a stroke on Christmas Day, Petit hits the bottle and mute minion Xavier Tchili begins making pagan sacrifices to lift the curse he feels has descended upon the family. But while Kötting tempers his narrative eccentricities with irreverent humour, there's something unintentionally risible about the climactic fire that nearly consumes Leroux and Auzanneau, as they reunite in a caravan suspended from branches in the depth of the forest. The closing image of Auzanneau striding the ramparts of the castle at Montségur feels similarly strained.

Strewn with offcuts from antiquated monochrome home movies and eclectically scored by Christian Garcia, this clearly has ambitions to be a visionary fairytale. But while Kötting suffuses the action with surreal melancholia, his preoccupation with form over content means that his insights into identity and community lack trenchancy. Auzanneau's gymnastically circuitous progress has fleeting curiosity value, but once the imposing Bideau is incapacitated, the action is beset by a fatal combination of melodrama and pretension. Kötting's aesthetic sense is exceptional, but his grandiloquent storytelling style is something of an acquired taste.

Finally, the tone and pace are judged to perfection in Juan José Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes, which won this year's Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. Adapted from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, this is a far cry from the episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and House that allowed Campanella to follow up the impressive Son of the Bride (2001) with the little-seen Moon of Avellaneda (2004). But while it didn't deserve to beat Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon to the Oscar, this is still a meticulously made drama that owes as much to cinematographer Félix Monti's exceptional close-ups and Lucila Robirosa's ageing make-up as the compelling performances of Ricardo Darín and Soledad Villamil.

Darín has just retired, but he keeps thinking back to his time as a Buenos Aires court investigator in the mid-1970s. One case has always disturbed him and he decides to re-examine the evidence in order to write a novel. Touched by the devotion of widowed bank clerk Pablo Rago, Darín had always suspected that the immigrant workers who were charged with the brutal rape and murder of newlywed teacher Carla Quevedo were beaten into confessing and, while going through some old photographs, he becomes convinced that he has found the culprit - as his eyes give him away.

Busting Javier Godino proves more difficult than Darín and long-time assistant Guillermo Francella had anticipated, however, and even when they get their man, the newly installed military dictatorship is prepared to cut a deal if he becomes a government agent.

While revisiting the facts, Darín decides to call on judge Soledad Villamil to show her his manuscript and ask for some advice. The Cornell-educated Villamil had made no secret of her affection for Darín when they were younger, but his insecurity at romancing a superior had driven her into the arms of another. But, even though Villamil urges Darín to find another subject for his book, it's quickly clear that old feelings linger and the story becomes as much a romance as a thriller.

In fact, the frequent flashbacks to the 70s also give this a political edge, as the sins of the Junta are once again exposed for censure. But the regime's tyranny and corruption matter less for Campanella than the difficulty of securing justice across the decades and the ease with which bureaucracy can obscure the truth. He even comes up with a dazzling metaphor for this, as Darín and Francella search for Godino in a packed football stadium, with the brilliance of the technique reinforcing the concept of conspiratorial evasiveness.

This sequence would grace any Hollywood blockbuster. But Campanella also excels at more intimate set-pieces, whether it's Francella providing some bibulous comic relief, Rago reliving his loss or Darín and Villamil flirtatiously discussing the capriciousness of passion and recollection. Yet, for all the surface polish, structural slickness and earnest sincerity, this always feels rather calculating and simplistic. Campanella strives to make points about the Argentinian mindset that allowed the March 1976 coup, but only fleetingly captures the actual state of the nation. Moreover, he fails to make sufficiently revealing contrasts between the country on the cusp of a CIA-inspired calamity and the imminent Millennium.

Nevertheless, Darín makes a compelling protagonist, whose banter with Francella is eclipsed only by his crackling chemistry with Villamil. One suspects that without the specificity of its backstory, this would be ripe for a Hollywood remake. Maybe they could set it in the days before the stolen election of 2000 and stage the climactic chase amidst the chaos of 9/11 instead of a football match.