"Genova" (also known as "A Summer in Genoa") – dir. Michael Winterbottom, running time 94’, 2008.
"Genova" ("A Summer in Genoa") – taking the history of cinema into account, there have been a number of significant films about losing one's beloved one, sorrow, trauma and related attempts to come to terms with the yawning gap and the nerve-wrecking loss. One could easily enumerate a dozen or so movies in that vein but let's limit ourselves here to Michael Haneke's recently critically acclaimed "Amour" or Krzysztof Kieślowski's phenomenal "Three Colours: Blue". Cognisant of the cinematic output of his fellow film makers, British director Michael Winterbottom weaves his own narrative on the very same topic. In "Genova" ("A Summer in Genoa") the artist who gave us "Welcome to Sarajevo" and "The Road to Guantanamo" treats us to a story of recently widowed Joe (Colin Firth) and his two adolescent daughters. The trio decides to move to Italy to start anew and to recuperate after the trauma of loss. Each of them will try to navigate the murky waters of grief in a different way as each of them is given to a disparate set of emotions and fears. Joe does so through his new academic position at a local university; the eldest daughter slowly and furtively gives herself over to her first love, thereby commencing the process of gradual maturity while the younger daughter is beset with nightmares that she will eventually overcome.
The narratives of the lives of the trio, fraught with pitfalls, tribulations, and anxieties as they are, will not go unnoticed by the fourth if silent protagonist - the city of Genova, the city that is as stunningly beautiful as it is charmingly mysterious. This city, with its many narrow backstreets, hidden paths, sun-drenched squares and piazzas, monumental churches and majestic museums, as well as shimmering seaside beaches, provides a fitting backdrop for the main plot to unravel.
"Genova" ("A Summer in Genoa") is a movie that makes it worth your while. Watch it if only to get to know whether this magical place enables its new residents to start again and get on with their newly-found lives.
Free admission