Geremia de Geremei is a loan shark. He makes his living from loaning small amounts to the desperate and the poor and he likes to believe that he is kind hearted. He lives with his mother in apparent penury and also works as a tailor. A father whose elegant daughter is about to marry comes to him to loan funds for the wedding. Geremia does his usual thing of checking the guy out and keeping tabs on him and meets his beauty queen daughter Rosalba. Smitten, he uses the loan to have his way with her but remains in love despite himself. He is approached by a large firm to do a one-off loan of a million and asks his cowboy henchman Gino to check them out. Gino says they are legit and Geremia savours a deal which could mean that he escapes the small time with Rosalba. But is his mother's caution about this gift horse justified?

Paolo Sorrentino's film is very moody and begins with the striking image of a nun buried up to her neck in sand as the tide comes in. Visually the film uses beautifully lit sets and the more outlandish vistas of fascist architecture, and in casting terms the astoundingly ugly Giacomo Rizzo is the loan shark against the heart stoppingly beautiful Laura Chiatti. Sorrentino's direction emphasises the surface of the images throughout and the camera is moving and the editing is deployed endlessly. We get slowmo women's volleyball, tracking shots ad nauseam an extreme close ups - Sorrentino clearly wants to impress with his technical skill. But to be honest, the mountains of style become like the Emperor's new clothes and reveal that the story means little, says little and matters slightly.

The film enjoys it's grotesques and interesting images but it doesn't understand why the tale it tells matters or what the meaning of it is. This means that the camera loves Rizzo's performance but this dreadful sleazy man becomes almost sympathetic because of the concentration on him. Similarly the script tells us that Rosalba is a fine dancer and to illustrate this, Sorrentino shows off with his mise-en-scene, camera angles and soundtrack while she lumbers across the stage in a remarkable example of her lack of talent and the effect resembles a beautifully presented crab rather than Cyd Charisse. This obsession with what the camera can make of the scenes leads to a superficiality which leaves the film hollow and self obsessed.

This narcissism and some poor pacing at the end of the film are the Achilles heel of what is a technically proficient endeavour. Rizzo is excellent, the grotesques of minders and the desperate is well done, and there are some moments of drama which are genuinely involving. But this is undermined by gimmickry, over direction and lack of a real authorial voice. The Family Friend will please those who enjoy the cinema of beautiful images without moral conviction, but in its obsession with image it really seems to lack a soul.