Middle-aged Italian businessman Titta Di Girolamo (Servillo) has been staying at the same Swiss hotel for the last eight years.

An obsessed creature of habit, he always follows the same set routine through a haze of cigarette smoke.

Slowly, we learn that every week he drives a suitcase-full of cash to a local bank for counting.

He occasionally makes the odd phone call to his estranged family, whose portrait he keeps on the bedside table in his otherwise featureless hotel room.

On Wednesday morning at precisely 10am he rolls up his left-hand sleeve, loads a syringe with smack and shoots up.

Director Paulo Sorrentino leeches random personal facts from the anonymous man, allowing us to build up a deeply fragmented picture of Titta.

It's not until he becomes intrigued by hotel barmaid Olivia Magnani that the true nature of his extended stay becomes disturbingly apparent.

Without giving too much of this chillingly exquisite mystery away, Sorrentino has delivered a scathingly powerful condemnation of the Mafia's moral repugnance.

A beautifully understated performance from Servillo - with iced water and heroin appearing to course through his veins - conveys the unbreakably comfortable bind Titta finds himself in.

It's intelligent, assured film-making...and leaves the viewer in no doubt that this is not the Cosa Nostra of popular belief.

Tim Evans