A Summer in Genoa (2008)

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!

Fmovies: 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.

The storyline is illogical. Who would take their children, after the trauma of losing their mother, to a centuries-old Italian city where they don't know the language, they know no-one, everything is foreign to them. The inter-relationships completely feel dysfunctional. The father is utterly ineffectual in nurturing his children. His children are having serious difficulties and he is clueless. If the purpose of placing the story in Genova was to give a metaphorical backdrop to the character's suffering then I don't accept it. That is how the movie feels - as if getting lost in a moldy old Italian city is how it feels to lose one's mother. It is bullshit. I found the movie painful to watch because the father is pathetic and clueless and the story illogical. No one would take their children to a shitty old Italian city after losing their mother.

A Summer in Genoa fmovies. This is one of those films the British Lottery Fund wastes its money on. The main problem is a rambling script which gets nowhere. The characters are not interesting, the story is conventional and insipid, the only thing of interest is the location: the city of Genoa (Genova in Italian). Having only a superficial acquaintance with Genoa, I had no idea of the intricate alleyways of its Old Town, and that the city was so interesting. I had thought Genoa was dull. I am delighted to say that I have been proved wrong. So from the travelogue point of view, this film has interest. The film contains one splendid performance, by a little girl named Perla Haney-Jardine. She has already made seven films despite being only 12, so she seems determined upon a career as an actress, and judging by her performance in this film, she should go far, as she is a natural and has a great deal of talent. Colin Firth, a reliable and professional actor, was on hand for the filming and when asked to be earnest, he was earnest, and when asked to be anguished, he was anguished. But somebody forgot to give him any worthwhile dialogue. The script is a total shambles. Catherine Keener does exceptionally well in a supporting role, and showing sympathy comes naturally to her, so that everybody would like to have her around (I would like to tell her every time I feel a cold coming on, as I know she would get me a soothing hot drink). So there we have it: Genoa's fascinating narrow alleys, an interesting little girl, and a sympathetic woman. Forget the rest. The older sister played by Willa Holland is such a disgusting character that the fact that the young actress does a good job of being repellent is not exactly the kind of acting tribute she would like to hear, I suspect. The notion that this family go off to Genoa to forget the unfortunate death of the mother is so trite that if we have another film like that, all dead mothers have a right to complain at being exploited. If Michael Winterbottom wanted to make a film about how interesting the old portion of Genoa is, why didn't he just go to the BBC and say he wanted to make a travel film with some mindless celebrity presenter? Why waste money on a feature film which is nothing but a vanity project of idle and meandering vacuity?

I have to say that this film engaged me completely. I could feel deeply for all the characters. I loved it and can't wait to see it again. Of course if you want a plot, action and a resolution you won't find it here. But there is room for many different kinds of films for different tastes. It was not so much a story as a picture of a family having to cope with the aftermath of the tragic death of their wife/mother. Any neat resolution would have been unrealistic. The fact that it showed domestic scenes was the whole point really. Everyday life has to go on, despite the pain of loss. The city of Genoa, with its maze of alleys and slightly threatening feel, as well as its beauty, was a perfect backdrop, to a family emotionally adrift and lost, trying to find a way through their loss to some kind of normal life.I thought all the actors did a marvellous job, and were totally convincing in the way they related to each other and reacted to their situation. This was a perfect role for Colin Firth. He is able to convey so much emotionally, with great restraint and delicacy of touch.

Genova is an incisively directed, beautifully lit, and exquisitely acted film that quickly moved into my top five all-time favorites list. A family suffering the sudden death of a beloved mother takes a journey to Genova, ostensibly to get away from their sadness and heal from their grief, and that is exactly what happens. But it is for you, the viewer, to grasp the metaphors of the maze-like streets of the city, the spirit of the mother who lingers, and the beautiful frescoes that reveal different aspects with each viewing.

I won't give away the ending - it's not obvious, only subtly powerful. But I will say that the grieving survivors act the way any of us would in such circumstances - we get on with our day to day lives, all the while trying to figure out what has happened to us and find meaning in it. Through it all we experience fear, guilt, avoidance, anger, confusion and loneliness. We hold onto memories, good and bad. We sometimes cling to each other and sometimes reject offers of comfort so we can work out our grief in the best way we know and survive the process. We end up different, still imperfect, but we heal and move along on our life path. If you are looking for an obvious plot, and someone to spoon feed you the meaning of this film, don't bother - you won't like it. If you have ever experienced sudden grief, you will understand it easily.

Colin Firth gives one of his best performances in this film. He has a generous way, in his serious roles, of portraying just enough knowledge of his characters to draw the viewer in and allow us to invest a lot of our own emotions into the progress of the character and his eventual outcome. That's Firth's great talent which is missed my so many who would rather have it all explained to them. I prefer the small space that Firth beckons us to enter. I watch this film often, and he and Winterbottom show me a new level, a new meaning, a new view of life's frescoes each time I see it.