WHO'D HAVE thought it? After a decade of dizzyingly prolific eclecticism, Michael Winterbottom finally threatens to fall into something like a rhythm. In recent years, the director has offered us, among other things, pretentious erotica ( 9 Songs), curious science fiction ( Code 46) and Georgian post-modernism ( A Cock and Bull Story). Now, Winterbottom follows up A Mighty Heart, his 2007 study of events surrounding the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, with another film focused on a recently widowed parent.
There, however, the similarities end. Whereas A Mighty Hearttended towards documentary realism, the spooky, elusive Genovanods in the direction of classic art films such as Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Nowand Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. Though prone to moments of obtuseness and outbreaks of travelogue fever, it is desperately moving in its engagement with the withering effects of loss.
Colin Firth plays Joe, a university lecturer, who, following the death of his wife in a car accident, accepts a post teaching in the gorgeously crumbled, titular Italian city. Kelly (Willa Holland), his older daughter, is at the stage where every one of her father’s gestures – each blink of his eye, each clearing of his throat – is a cause for petulant sighing and door-slamming. Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine), the younger child, who feels some responsibility for the accident, frequently wakes up screaming piteously for her mother.
In the opening weeks of their Italian adventure, the family members find different ways of processing their grief. Kelly
climbs on the back of various unacceptable scooters. Joe flirts with a student and renews an acquaintance with an old chum (the reliably charismatic Catherine Keener). Mary comes to believe that her mother is lurking in the shadows between the disintegrating buildings.
Despite the slipperiness of the scenario – are we allowed to believe in Mary's ghost? – the first-rate cast flesh out their characters impressively and invest the film with real emotional ballast. Haney- Jardine, who excelled as Uma Thurman's daughter in Kill Bill, is particularly affecting as the disturbed Mary.
There is, however, no avoiding the cliché that will appear in every other review of this peculiar picture: The real star of the film is Genoa. Relishing the sharp contrasts between light and darkness, Marcel Zyskind's camera makes the city look every bit as ominously delicious as the Venice of Don't Look Now. The city's Chamber of Commerce may wish to consider giving Winterbottom some sort of decoration.
