Indie Movie Serves up Visions of Italy and Innocence in Genova

Jesse | Mar 8, 2009

Italy is a beautiful country. The accents, the people, the architecture; it makes perfect sense why director Michael Winterbottom decided to shoot his film there.

The story first develops in the U.S., but quickly moves overseas when a family looses their mother and decides that some change is in order to help with their grief.

Colin Firth (Where the Truth Lies, Mamma Mia!) moves with his two daughters to Italy to try to relieve the past memories and cope in a life without a mother and wife.

The youngest daughter Mary, played by Perla Haney-Jardine, has the hardest time accepting her mother’s death, as she feels personally responsible. To make matters worse, her older sister Kelly (Willa Holland, The O.C.) plays the domineering older sister who only cares when it is too late.

Winterbottom does a fantastic job turning the beautiful city of Genova into a place of heartache and mystery. From the shady apartment alleyways to the bustling midday rush hour, these every day places become truly terrifying thanks to Winterbottom and Jardine.

As a still innocent child, Jardine’s role was one of the best performances seen in a good while. The realism portrayed by this little girl is simply frightening, as her mourning is something so moving that I could not even imagine the pain she had to deal with.

Under the impression that she caused her mother’s death, she would still see her mother and try to make contact with her. To say this is impossible is something I now actually wonder about thanks to this film. After such a traumatizing experience at such a young age, the paranormal is made, in a way, normal.

Holland’s role as her loveless big sister comes across as immature and harsh, but I can safely assume that this was just her way of coping, no matter how much I detested her.

Firth’s performance was not as impressive, however, he did have one particular scene that made my skin crawl.

Catherine Keener’s (Into the Wild, An American Crime) role as the “new” mom was everything you would expect from her, but, as she was mostly cast as a side character, she could not really shine.

Genova earned a nine out of ten.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0791303/