Running time: 93 minutes
Starring: Colin Firth, Hope Davies, Perla Haney-Jardine, Catherine Keener, Willa Holland
Rating 8 out of 10
The British director Micheal Winterbottom follows up A Mighty Heart with a meditative, affecting story of a family's grief and renewal.
Colin Firth stars as the recently-widowed Joe, who moves with his two daughters to Italy, five months after the death of his wife in a car-crash - an accident the two girls were also involved in, but survived.
Adrift in the sultry, labyrinth-like city, - a setting in keeping with the characters emotional displacement - the fractured family each tries to find solace in different ways. For Joe, it's escapism, lecturing at the university alongside old colleague Barbara (Catherine Keener), for petulant 16-year-old Kelly (Willa Holland) it's exploring her nascent sexuality with the local Italian boys and for 10 year old Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine) it's seeing the ghost of her dead mother (Hope Davies) everywhere.
Comparisons have been made to Don't Look Now, which is a bit facile, as this is not a supernatural story, but one about the ruinous impact of guilt on a child. The mother appears at first to Mary as a benevolent force, but ultimately as something quite different; culminating in a scene that will have you on the edge of your seat.
Given that the film is written and directed in such a deft manner, the only thing that rankles is the heavy-handed exchanges between the dead mother and Mary, which seem laboured and at odds with the films theme.
However there are strong performances all round, Colin Firth especially stands out as the family linchpin perpetually on the edge of coming undone, pulled between Mary's neediness and Kelly's hostility. His relationship with Barbara doesn't go the way you might expect, in fact nothing in the film does and it's all the better for it's naturalistic style.
It's difficult to pull off a feel that is both deeply sad and optimistic, but Michael Winterbottom and writer Laurence Coriat have succeeded with this accomplished, visceral film.
Kate Coffey
Colin Firth stars as the recently-widowed Joe, who moves with his two daughters to Italy, five months after the death of his wife in a car-crash - an accident the two girls were also involved in, but survived.
Adrift in the sultry, labyrinth-like city, - a setting in keeping with the characters emotional displacement - the fractured family each tries to find solace in different ways. For Joe, it's escapism, lecturing at the university alongside old colleague Barbara (Catherine Keener), for petulant 16-year-old Kelly (Willa Holland) it's exploring her nascent sexuality with the local Italian boys and for 10 year old Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine) it's seeing the ghost of her dead mother (Hope Davies) everywhere.
Comparisons have been made to Don't Look Now, which is a bit facile, as this is not a supernatural story, but one about the ruinous impact of guilt on a child. The mother appears at first to Mary as a benevolent force, but ultimately as something quite different; culminating in a scene that will have you on the edge of your seat.
Given that the film is written and directed in such a deft manner, the only thing that rankles is the heavy-handed exchanges between the dead mother and Mary, which seem laboured and at odds with the films theme.
However there are strong performances all round, Colin Firth especially stands out as the family linchpin perpetually on the edge of coming undone, pulled between Mary's neediness and Kelly's hostility. His relationship with Barbara doesn't go the way you might expect, in fact nothing in the film does and it's all the better for it's naturalistic style.
It's difficult to pull off a feel that is both deeply sad and optimistic, but Michael Winterbottom and writer Laurence Coriat have succeeded with this accomplished, visceral film.
Kate Coffey
