It's said that in the moments before you die, your whole life flashes past in front of you.

For surgeon Timoteo, his life unfolds before him as he waits for news on the fate of his daughter, critically injured in a road crash.

It's not a particularly uplifting course of events. As a young surgeon, he breaks down in a dusty Italian backwater where impish chambermaid Italia (Cruz) lets him use her phone.

Slugging chilled vodka while waiting for the village mechanic, Timoteo returns to Italia's home - a ramshackle hovel in the shadow of new high-rises - and rapes her.

Returning to his idyllic beachfront house and his beautiful wife Else (Claudia Gerini), he guiltily draws the legend "I Raped A Woman" in the sand.

However, disenchanted with marriage (he kicks his in-laws' dog) he returns - contrite - only to force Italia against the mantelpiece and have his way with her.

Somehow, an attraction - or dependence - mutates into regular house calls with Timoteo whisking Italia off to medical conferences (where she glams up as Coronation Street's Bet Lynch).

Of course, like all affairs, it can't go on like this…and a sequence of events forces Timoteo into making decisions that will have catastrophic effects on them all.

The device of using Timoteo's tortured time while waiting for news of his daughter adds a chilling frisson to the history of betrayals unfolding inside his head.

Castellito - whose wife Margaret Mazzantini wrote the source novel - convinces as the hangdog doctor besotted with the bohemian Italia.

However, Cruz struggles with the role of a fiercely independent Albanian immigrant bearing the scars of neglect and adolescent abuse.

Where she should be eliciting our sympathy, she totters exaggeratedly across the screen - more Julie Walters' Mrs Overall than a tragic heroine.

Events, as you might expect, take a depressing course, which is not helped by a scarcely believable plot swerve coupled to an ear-bleeding pomp-rock soundtrack.

It's a bit like an ill-fitting, over-stylised jigsaw where all the pieces have been hammered into place.

Tim Evans