That’s hardly surprising, since Moretti has long been known for his left-wing politics–and his solipsistic essaylike films that reflect those leanings. Films like “Palombella Rossa,” his surrealist cri de coeur in which he stars as an amnesiac water-polo-playing communist; “Aprile,” his caustic dissection of (among other things) both Berlusconi and the left, which he skewers with equal enthusiasm; and, perhaps most notably, “Caro Diario” (“Dear Diary”), the film that won Moretti best director at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. It is what its title suggests: Nanni proclaiming his love for the movie “Flashdance,” Nanni remembering the great writer and director Pasolini, Nanni on a Vespa tour of Rome, Nanni on the elusive body itch that is finally diagnosed as Hodgkin’s disease, which he lives to tell about. At one point he says: “Look what we’ve become. We shouted violent slogans. Now we’re bitter and ugly. But not me, I’m a resplendent 40-year-old.” And no matter how much he likes to remind you that he’s played a schoolteacher (“Sweet Body of Bianca,” in 1984), a priest (“The Mass Has Ended,” in 1985) and other roles, he is, more than anything, an advertisement for himself–or at the very least for his alter ego, Michele, a self-absorbed but endearing satirist.

So what is surprising, then, is his latest film, “The Son’s Room,” a simple, straight-forward narrative about a family coming to grips with the loss of their teenage son and brother. It recently opened in the United States after capturing the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the first time an Italian film had won since Ermanno Olmi’s “Tree of the Wooden Clogs” in 1978. “If I have changed a little bit as a director, that’s probably because I’ve changed as a person a little,” he says. The 48-year-old, who lives in Rome, has white flecks in his trademark beard now and a 5-year-old son with his wife, Silvia Nono. His gray oxford shirt, fashionably unfashionable, is complemented by a dashing, understated blue knit tie that looks as if it was handmade in Milan. He embodies that uniquely Italian persona: the stylish lefty.

In “The Son’s Room” he is part of a young family in the central Adriatic city of Ancona. They are almost unrealistic; for one thing, they have two children–a rarity considering Italy’s famous negative birthrate–and they obviously had the kids when they were young. Still, they’re people you’d love to be neighbors with: smart, warm and stable. Moretti plays a psychologist who doesn’t have a cell phone (another Italian rarity) and whistles Hare Krishna chants. He has a lovely wife (played by the thoughtful Laura Morante) and two well-adjusted teens, the boy refreshingly un-type A. But then there’s an accident on a perfectly fine day, and their contentment unravels. The story is told with great subtlety and care, something that has rightly earned the film international attention. “Certainly I wouldn’t have told this story 20 years ago,” he says. “The theme of death is something I think of more now than I did 20 years ago.”

As a rare honor, the Palme d’Or also is a reminder of how far the once brilliant Italian film industry has fallen. With the exception of Moretti, Gianni Amelio and the Taviani brothers, there has been, for the most part, a dearth of serious Italian films produced and supported in Italy, let alone distributed internationally. (The sentimental fare of Roberto Benigni and Giuseppe Tornatore has done well but is hardly Antonioni or Fellini.) “There’s no time to regret the past,” says Moretti, who also has his own production company that has been putting out films from younger directors. “In the ’80s and ’90s, there was this mistrust of Italian films on the part of Italian audiences themselves, because they felt Italian movies were pretentious, boring and inexpressive. But in the last two years this trend has somehow reversed. It’s not exactly an explosion in the Italian film industry, but some have captured an audience in Italy.”

He’s not sure what his next project will be. “The Son’s Room,” he says, “is still deep inside me.” But, as always, he is consumed with politics. “The left has totally gotten lost,” Moretti says. “They have to find themselves again.” And on Berlusconi: “I don’t see any redeeming qualities in him. I don’t think he’s a fascist, but a person foreign to democracy–it’s not part of his makeup.” It sounds obvious, and perhaps too easy, but a Moretti sendup of Berlusconi could be an instant classic: Silvio and Me.