FILM REVIEW: 'Genova'

Sad times in Genova.
Sad times in Genova.
Family on the brink...

> Genova
4 stars (out of 5)

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Perla Haney-Jardine, Willa Holland, Hope Davis
Rating: (M)


I left Genova (Metro) wondering what is up with Colin Firth, is he trying to tell us something? Only a few weeks ago I saw him in A Single Man (Rialto) and the number of plot similarities between the two films is unnerving.

In Genova Firth plays Joe, who has lost his wife Marianne (Hope Davis), in a car accident. His two daughters were in the car and the youngest, Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine), has the additional burden of being the cause of the accident. Joe is a teacher and in an effort to kick-start the healing process he takes a position in Genova for a year.

The strains of living in a foreign country appear to pull the family apart. Joe's old college friend Barbara (Catherine Keener) arranged the job for him and has designs to get closer to him.

His eldest daughter Kelly (Willa Holland) starts hanging out with Italian boys and Mary sees her mother's ghost in every shadowed alley of the Renaissance city.

While Firth's portrayal of grief filled the screen in A Single Man, in Genova he is underused. It is the girl's emotions that matter, we are not even sure if he knows of Mary's role in the tragedy.

Director Michael Winterbottom has taken a tragic situation and resisted the urge to pile on the drama. Instead, we see a family on the brink stumble their way through mostly unfrayed.


Best thing: For me, it was the way this let nothing much happen. The accident remains the worst thing in their lives. Yet for many the deliberate small scale will equal boredom.

Worst thing: It is one thing for nothing much to happen, but to keep teasing us with ominous set-ups that peter out is just cruel.

See it with: Someone wanting either an Italian or a Colin Firth hit. They both look slightly scruffy, but still appealing.


- Christine Powley.

 

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