Genova

 

Genova 2008

• Director: Michael Winterbottom
• Seen by this director – Tristram Shandy, 24 Hour Party People, Jude
• Based on the novel: no
• Cast: Colin Firth, Perla Haney-Jardine, Willa Holland, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Colin Firth – 1917, Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, Genius, Before I Go to Sleep, The Railway Man, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The King’s Speech, Mamma Mia, Then She Found Me, Love Actually, Girl with Pearl Earring, Bridget Jones’s Diary, My Life So Far, Shakespeare in Love, A Thousand Acres, Fever Pitch, The English Patient, Pride and Prejudice, Circle of Friends
• Perla Haney-Jardine – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Kill Bill 2
• Catherine Keener – Enough Said, The Soloist, Into the Wild, Full Frontal, Being John Malkovich, Living in Oblivion, Johnny Suede
• Hope Davis – Infamous, Proof, About Schmidt,
• Why? Colin Firth
• Seen: 28 February 2021.      

       Marianne (Davis), music professor, mother of Mary (Haney-Jardine) and Kelly (Holland) and wife of Joe (Firth), is killed in a car crash.

       Joe has been offered a year’s professorship in Genoa and though family and friends advise him not to uproot the girls in their grief, off they go.

       They settle into their flat, arranged by Joe’s old Harvard classmate Barbara (Keener). Not much happens except Mary’s nightmares and bed-wetting, and Kelly’s secret trysts with hot Italian boys. The first half of the film is mostly a glowing tourist promotion for Genoa.

       The family drama builds slowly until it becomes quite suspenseful and turns it into a low-key but gripping film. Young Haney-Jardine is excellent as Mary.      

 4* of 5