Abel Ferrara's latest film is a beautiful, beguiling re-construction of the last day in the life of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. It's not a biopic in any traditional sense – and those looking for one may wish to avoid it – but it's still an insightful examination of Pasolini's life and death.

As played by Willem Dafoe, Pasolini is seen here as a filmmaker in creative and negative overdrive. He is the post-production stage of his new film Salo and he is writing both a new novel and a screenplay. His anger and despair at modern life is evident in his interviews and in his conversations with friends. His need for company will place him in fateful circumstances.

It's a clever and passionate film in which Pasolini's own story is intercut with dramatized scenes from his novel and screenplay. One of his actors – Ninetto Davoli, played in the biographical section by Riccardo Scamarcio – also plays a character from the novel, and there's a beautiful moment at Rome's Ostiense station where they appear on screen at the same time. In this way, Ferrara pays homage to Pasolini's films by bending traditional structure and logic, and uses this to convey the maelstrom in the director's head during his final days.

Dafoe is remarkable, bringing the essence of Pasolini to life and making him instantly recognisable, while steering clear of a two dimensional impersonation. His sad yet proud face is endlessly fascinating and in the night time scenes he cuts a dark, leather clad figure across the screen.

As much as anything, Pasolini is an exploration of mid 70s Rome, an edgy, dangerous city not unlike the New York of Scorsese's Taxi Driver, which was made in the year that Pasolini died. In this Rome, neo-Nazi gang's shoot passersby, homophobic youth's murder gay men, and impoverished Italian teenagers go on the game. At one point Pasolini tells a friend that 'Rome is finished'. Thankfully, recent history has shown us differently; the tragedy is that Pasolini never got to see it.