A JOURNEY OF REDISCOVERY... TO "GENOVA"

While watching Genova, I was struck by how closely related the art of painting and the art of cinema are… Not necessarily in the physical sense either, I mean sure, films are made up of a series of pictures, 24 frames per minute, but that is not what I mean, even though the photography in Genova is simply amazing… Some films sort of suck you up into them and you “live” the adventure with the hero. Others are like a beautiful painting. They unfold before your eyes and you watch moved, astounded or however you feel at the time… Michael Winterbottom’s Genova is one of these films. Unique and simply beautiful.
Oscar ® nominee Colin Firth stars as university lecturer Joe, who is faced with major trauma and life decisions to make after his wife dies, leaving him with his two young daughters. The suffering of the family is great and the house full of memories so Joe decides that a clean page is what everyone needs for this “new” life they are faced with… So, he packs their things, finds a good teaching job and settles his young family in Genova. The historical and sunny Italian city is as far as can be from their previous lives in the States. With the help of friends (double Oscar ®nominee Catherine Keener among others) all starts off pretty smoothly, but the family will have their ups and downs (older sister Kelly spending more and more time with her new boyfriend and neglecting her younger sister, while her little sister claims to be communicating with her dead mother’s ghost…) But Genova is mainly a story of looking for a way of moving on. A fresh start in the true meaning of the word.
It is, in my view, a bit of a gamble to make a film like this, unless of course you are Michael Winterbottom and you know the film is very well directed indeed . If you don’t let yourself go with the balmy, Mediterranean flow of the movie and lose yourself in the exquisite details, you may well find the film boring. A film for a certain kind of person, or a certain frame of mind maybe. And then again, not everyone is into painting either, but that doesn’t lessen anything of say Monet’s paintings does it?... :)