Review - Genova, Empire Leicester Square

Warning: this film may seriously distress those viewers who have a child, are related to a child, may have once seen a child or were in fact brought up as a child!

Michael Winterbottom had a spare few weeks in his hectic schedule so he decided to take a crack cast of American actors, plus Equity's Mr. Dull - Colin Firth, follow them round the older bits of Genoa and scare the bejeesus out of me.

With shades of Don't Look Now, twisting alleyways and glimpses of a loved one, and bizarrely Walkabout (maybe it's the browning of a sixteen year old skin, or the trailing of one sibling by another) the film follows a newly widowed Firth and his two children, Willa Holland and Perla Haney-Jardine as they re-locate to the titular Italian city after the death of his wife in a terrible car accident. Firth teaches, what, I'm not sure, at a university and dabbles in a flirtation with a younger student, the elder child, Holland, explores her sexuality, the local lads and the local drugs, while her sister plays the piano, sketches and is visited by the ghost of her mother.

And watching it unsettled me more and gave me more distress than a barrel load of Japanese horror movies.

The handheld camera work is fantastic, the acting is superb; Catherine Keener, Firth's old Harvard flame, as always looking right at home in whatever she does and ageing like a real person, not a Hollywood actor, Perla Haney-Jardine heart-breakingly touching, Willa Holland needs to eat some pies and Colin Firth does Colin Firth very well...But....Love-Will-Tear-Us-Apart it was painful!

I don't think I recovered from the terrible way the Hope Davis dies in the opening scene and as Winterbottom racked up the sense of guilt and forboding and despair I just wanted it all to stop...and then it did incredibly abruptly.

the horror, the horror.

Genova is released on Friday the 26th of March.