Genova (2009)

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.

This movie is just different. I was quite confused after the movie and had first to decide if i like the movie or not. I totally agree with other persons, that there is not really a rising story or a climax. I also agree that there are several scenes when you expect something to happen and it didn't happen anything. But that's exactly the reason why the movie is so subtly powerful. The whole story is very authentic. Every person handles the situation different, in his own way. The relation between the two sisters is displayed in a great way.... when you think what happened in the beginning and that the bigger sister didn't mention anything about that the whole time. A very good movie in detail.

Tragedy strikes and Joe (Colin Firth) whisks his two daughters off to Italy for "A Summer in Genoa". Not a fun-filled holiday but an attempt to rebuild their lives after the mother dies. The positive reviews refer to this as a film stripped down to the bare realities of life, I refer to it more as a film stripped down to nothing.Flat dialogue removes the life of the still living characters who have become nothing but embodiments of guilt and the aftermath of a tragedy. There is nothing but the element of loss to connect us to these characters, and I need more than that. An overwhelming soundtrack of sad and dramatic scores, Italian music and background noise prepare us for even more devastating events but quick cuts then always bring us back to the same space we were in before.This is an experienced filmmaker who knows that simple scenes with only a sleight of hand can tell us so much, but I believe that only works when there is more than nothing happening in the film. It's also a film with a great look for its low budget, but it does not show off the beauty of Genoa (or Genova in Italian).If you're looking for a small, raw film about loss, then "A Summer in Genoa" is actually good. But I want and need more than just examples of guilt and sadness in movies.

Colin Firth in a bit of a thankless pumpkinhead role. He takes daughters, guilt-driven tween Mary and sexpot teen Kelly to Genoa for a year after his wife dies suddenly in a car accident. The British reviewers seem to acclaim his performance as "understated" and "grief-driven" but I find him clueless and baffling. His younger daughter is clearly in a state of near psychosis, and his older daughter is sexually acting out in a rather dangerous way. He says and does virtually nothing about either. I guess this is "keeping a stiff upper lip." In fact, the entirety of his role in this film seems to be to act as Julie, the Cruise Director from the Love Boat. Catherine Keener is, as usual excellent, but the only thing she gets to do is inveigh him to pay some attention. I thought the whole thing confounding.