A Summer in Genoa

source: A Summer in Genoa

Two girls kill their mother when they place their hands over her eyes while she's driving on a highway. They were playing a game, not homicide, but such stupid destructive behavior amounts to involuntary manslaughter in my opinion; not cute. This is, all the same, a beautiful movie to watch; primarily for the scenes in Italy as well as the ample supply of pretty legs. The filmmaker has gone for authentic dialog. ad-lib style; but the reason I score this movie as a "5" is because it lacks focus or viewpoint. By giving us 6 characters always in scatter-shot style, there is not much focus on plot or character development. No reason to like or dislike any of them. The older daughter meets a guy and finds passion. The younger one does not (too young) and the father attracts a possible new wife. No one's character develops, nothing much happens (besides eating spaghetti) and after 90 minutes, for no other reason, the movie ends. FIN

This film is about a family trying to come to terms with the death of the mother/wife by moving to Genova, Italy. The plot of "Genova" sounds promising, but unfortunately it is empty and without focus. The film only consists of a collection of scenes depicting the daily life of the family, such as swimming, taking piano lessons or cooking eggs. Most of such scenes are redundant and tiresome, completely failing to engage viewers emotionally. The ending is very disappointing as it is not spectacular, moving or emotional. I can safely say that I am disappointed and bored by "Genova" The only thing good about the film is the sunny weather and the beauty of Genova. "Genova" can serve as an extended tourism advertisement for the city, but not as a film to be enjoyed.

After a car-crash results in a death, the widower and his two daughters move to the city of Genova in Italy to escape the sorrow that haunts their life. As each of them comes to terms with the loss and the new beginning in their own way, the director of the movie takes a turn to show us how the three-way relationship adjusts rather than concentrating on each character's development. The younger daughter's night-time crying becomes something for the father to handle. The new sense of rebellious freedom in the elder daughter is more seen from the younger sister and her dad's POVs. But without getting too dramatic or philosophical, or without even getting too close to the characters, the movie remains an outside view of the small family in somewhat distant, documenting way. My Rating --> 3 of 5

When I first heard about this movie I got very excited: it doesn't happen every day to have a little city like Genova featuring in an international production, and, as a resident of this very city, I felt the right to boast a slight sense of revenge against other, more celebrated, Italian cities (to put things in perspective, Genova is often overlooked by Italian medias and by the powers that be, despite having the second biggest and busiest harbour in Europe). This until I actually managed to watch the movie. Just to avoid this post to become an unmitigated rant, I have to say that the movie itself it's not half bad...but when you name your work after a city, you're at least expected to have a faint grasp on what the whole place is about. Instead we get a trite bunch of clichés about Italy: tanned guys teasing young girls while zooming along on mopeds - people here, both old and young,barely acknowledge your presence until you bump into them - ...then the same guys roaming through the city in a huge, motorcycle-mounted pack... - never seen anything like that -...and then a little bit more of the same guys goofing on the beach... It looks like the director had spent three months in Rome or Naples before he decided to have a slightly left field take on it and to choose a less renowned city as a setting for his work, maybe to appeal to the more "indie"-oriented part of the audience. Pity he didn't manage to get anything out of the place's soul: some really awful Italians B-movies from the 70s give you a fairer rendition of the city than this movie could ever dream of. Anyway, I wouldn't be so riled about that if it wasn't for the director waxing lyrical, in interviews with local newspapers, about how much he loved the city and how he succeeded in transposing its heart and soul on the screen. Again, not a bad a film, but you could have it called with any generic Mediterranean city name and nobody would notice!

I'm afraid I join the line of people, admittedly quite short, reading the other reviews, who found this movie a waste of my DVD-rental money. Yes, there was tension in wondering if anything would happen to the children whilst wandering around Genoa and, yes, I liked the way in which Michael Winterbottom portrayed the narrow alleyways of that city in the manner of Nicholas Roeg portraying Venice in "Don't Look Now", but that was about it. Unlike other reviewers on IMDb who found it a fine exploration of reaction to grief, I didn't get that feeling from Colin Firth as Joe, nor from his elder daughter Kelly, only from younger daughter Mary. I did hope that her visions of her mother might lead somewhere but, alas, they didn't. Kelly did explode at one point at Mary about how the latter had messed up Kelly's life for the role Mary had played in the death of their mother but by then, it was too late. Perhaps the allusion to "Don't look now" led me to expect something to happen, but nothing ever does. In that respect it joins "Lost in translation" in the list of lauded movies where nothing happens. It stands on a rung above movies where you wonder why well-known actors got involved in the project (To pay the children's'/grandchildrens' school fees?) but this movie is not that much further up the ladder. "Is that it?" is what my wife and I said to each other as the credits rolled and that is my summary of this movie.

Without reiterating what was said above about this movie, I would like to add that I was looking forward to watching this film...the cast/location and the work of the excellent director Michael Winterbottom etc...It had a vague shadow of 'Don't look Now' about the storyline from the beginning. A stay in different surroundings (Italy again) to dim the heartbreak of loss...or perhaps that's how I saw it? So consequently I sat there waiting for the story to unfold and put a spin on what we expect to happen to this family in a foreign European country....and I sat there and sat there....and guess what? nothing actually happens! and I mean nothing!! You are not even given the chance to get into the characters as they are so 1 dimensional and vacuous..You are led to believe from the pace of the movie that something was going to happen to turn the whole film on it's head...The eldest daughters flirtation with the local vespa boys, had great scope to take the movie in another direction, the youngest daughters visions of her dead mother ended up being a fruitless and pointless exercise, the fathers attempts at being seduced by one of his female students felt ridiculous given his age. It felt as if the script had a last recall made where they decided at the last minute to eradicated any guts to the story and went for paring it down to a bare minimum to no effect. When the credits started to roll (unexpectedly) you can't help but feel robbed of your time spent sat watching this pile of rubbish.

A constant state of anxiety makes this a difficult film to watch; it communicates the anxieties of a parent for the well-being of their children very powerfully. Will they get lost? Will they get run over? Will they drown? Achingly terrible fears arise out of the most mundane circumstances. The acting is fabulous and the city, itself, is beautifully filmed, so that it becomes integral to the feelings that are created. The family relationships are truthfully portrayed and the effects of grief, expereinced in different ways by each of them, is beautifully explored without a hint of sentimentality. This is a true gem of a movie.

This movie was way to slow for me. I had to watch it twice to get through it. I can't blame the acting - I feel all of the cast did a good job with what they had. The cinematography was impressive - all the narrow, tall alley shots made me feel like I was there. The story to me was just lacking. I think I understand the message they were trying to get across - a family coming to terms with the accidental death of their mother/wife - a realistic story. But this family was not really much more interesting than my next door neighbor. It was just too common place. I spent the movie waiting for something to happen - and it never did. Even the inclusion of the supernatural twist of the mother's ghost seemed not to add to the story at all. The basics of a story that you expect to find in a movie were missing. There was no rising action, every part of the movie was just another day. Some conflict between the characters did occur but was built up so slowly and it hadn't really reached a high enough point by the time the climax happened. When the climax did happened I was wondering "was that it?". It was somewhat more exciting than the rest of the movie but a far cry from what a climax should be. The resolution seemed totally missing to me. I suppose we can assume that after the bland climax some of the conflict between the characters was resolved but I really don't think the incident was major enough to have caused that much of an effect on the characters past a day or two. Or perhaps we aren't supposed to assume anything was really resolved and that we just saw a short period of time of this very dull family and it will continue on the same once we're finished watching. Overall, not a terrible movie but one they could have done much more with.

Why on earth is Colin Firth in this pointless film? Has he really been that strapped for cash? The film isn't clear on what it wants to be about, grief?, exotic places?, ghosts?, a vehicle for Mr Darcy? It's a muddled, muddy mess. There seems to be some sort of idea that Italy must be good, in itself, and that Italian has something to offer as a language - but in the end the girls just want to go back to yankland. There are pointless episodes on the beach, in churches, on busy roads - but what it is all about, or why anybody should care simply isn't clear. There was also a yank woman in the film. It wasn't clear what here job was, but she seemed only to be there to make vapid, inappropriate and maudlin comments to the girl. Was it supposed to be about paedophillia?? A pretty dreadful mess, all in all. I gave it 2 rather than 1 because it doesn't have the charm of an utterly ghastly film.