Genova

From its gripping early moments, Genova has an immediacy and truthfulness which draws us into the story of a family trying to rebuild itself after a tragic event. Colin Firth plays Joe, a university lecturer who leaps at the chance of a year-long teaching job in the Italian town of Genova, seeing it as offering a fresh start for him and his daughters, following the recent death of his wife in a car accident. When they arrive they have a month to spend together before term starts and, settled into their apartment, sixteen year old Kelly (Willa Holland) starts to explore the exciting possibilities of this new world. At night her younger sister Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine), who feels responsible for the accident, is haunted by nightmares and by day she starts to see her mother walking in the neighbourhood streets.

The town itself, with its maze of narrow alleyways, is an atmospheric location, offering up both freedom and danger, a combination of beauty and threat which loosely recalls Don't Look Now. Working from a script co-written with Laurence Coriat (Wonderland), director Michael Winterbottom and regular cinematographer Marcel Zyskind shoot the film largely hand-held, using mostly real locations and available light. This freedom and intimacy of approach brings a fresh and natural feel, and the lack of artifice shines through, not least in the wholly believable performances. Restrained and beautifully observed, Genova is a superlative study of family relationships that is both resolutely unsentimental and deeply moving.
Sandra Hebron