Lecherous, tight-fisted little ogre Geremia (Rizzo) lives in relative squalor with his bed-ridden mother, keeping the place in darkness while scouring the streets for pocket change with his metal-detector.

Not that he needs to, since he runs a lucrative tailoring-and-loan operation under the nickname ‘Geremia Heart-of-Gold’ - irony being another of his adorable traits.

Potential clients are risk-assessed by his cowboy-fixated partner Gino (Bentivoglio) - unless they happen to be attractive women, in which case Geremia takes a more personal interest.

Indeed, the insidious little shylock takes pleasure in worming his way into his customers’ lives until all debts are settled.

It’s a humiliating price to pay for the likes of the Saverios, a couple desperate to throw a nice wedding for their daughter Rosalba (Chiatti)… even though she doesn’t want it.

Rosalba is repulsed by Geremia, yet trapped inside that beauty queen’s body is a like-mindedly contemptuous soul.

He is given further cause to rub his grubby little hands together when a businessman offers to pay back double if he fronts up a million euros. That’s rich even for his blood, but lady luck is positively beaming right now.

Rizzo is terrific, making Geremia so irredeemably slimy you’ll want to wipe down the screen every time he scuttles out of the picture.

Like David Lynch, Sorrentino has a gift for presenting the dark side of human nature in a hypnotically abstract way.

Building on the promise of psychological drama The Consequences of Love, he frames each shot with an artist’s care while selecting a soundtrack which is at once incongruous yet entirely appropriate.

And without a single sympathetic character, he turns an essentially mean-spirited parable of greed and reckoning into a strangely engaging experience. This is the work of a unique talent.

Elliott Noble