Genova (2009)

You won't be disappointed!

From my favorite movies..

Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

All the other reviews have gone over the plot details so I won't. Genoa looks interesting and romantic,and the actors play their parts well. But this whole story turns on the fact that Dad virtually abandons His children for the summer in a confusing city in a foreign country. After almost no orientation to their new home He hands His two daughters, ages i6 and 9,the keys and says "Good luck finding your way back home down these winding,maze like,cobble stoned alleys." Sure He comes home from work and comforts the younger daughter when she has nightmares, but He lets the older girl run wild with no control or consequences when she comes home late for curfew,and won't tell Him who she's been with or what she's doing.I don't care how much they're all mourning the death of their wife and mother,or how much the father is in denial about what His kids needs are,the very least the parent should do is set limits to behavior and control them for their own good. There never seems to be any question of "What are you doing? What are you thinking? You can't do this!"

I saw this on TV after the guide gave it a good review, and I was vastly disappointed. It was as if the film makers had plotted out the characters' lives in excruciating detail, taking care to include all the mundane parts and not place any emphasis on any part that might give an insight into the characters' emotions, then took random bits from this time line, and that's what wound up on the screen. There are many scenes which lasted not much more than a minute, and which seemed completely pointless.It felt much longer than the quite short running time, and I didn't care a bit about any of the characters except the younger daughter, or see any point to what I had been shown. It did remind me a little of "Don't Look Now", which is not a good thing (I definitely wanted those two hours of my life back) although it didn't have the older movie's staggeringly moronic twist ending ... or any kind of twist, really. It plods for 90 minutes then just stops.Avoid.

After his wife dies, Joe (Colin Firth) decides a change of scenery would be good for him and his two daughters, so he accepts a teaching job at the university in Genoa. The younger daughter is racked with guilt and sees visions of her mother, the teenage daughter rebels by chasing boys, while dad enjoys his job and his students.With a cinéma vérité style and plot, this film feels like a reality show. Dialogue is mumbled and often insignificant, emotions are muted, the hand-held camera is often shaky, and it all seems too ordinary to be interesting for an hour and a half. The children are often lost among the dark and winding alleyways of the city, building tension that, unfortunately, never pays off. The script (which annoyingly sometimes said they were there for a year, other times just there for the summer) goes on and on about their daily activities adjusting to a new city and that's realistic, but not, for me, necessarily entertaining.Firth is very good as the father, but we never get to know or understand him well. Only once does he mention his wife and his feelings about her aren't clear. He seems to get over her quickly enough, embracing the city and romancing a local. Willa Holland is the epitome of a self-centered and headstrong teen, but she's thoroughly unlikable. The youngest daughter is more sympathetic, but there was something lacking that kept me from caring about her.All in all, I enjoyed the scenery but the story lacked emotion and clarity and was dull for me.

I gave this move a try b/c of Colin Firth who is one of my favourite actors. But what a huge disappointment. I knew this movie would be melancholy and not have a lot of action, but this has got to be one of the most boring movies I have ever watched. Not only is there no plot, I don't think the movie even attempts to have a meaningful message. I didn't care at all about the characters. The movie basically takes you through the day to day life of the family after they move to Genoa. And it basically goes nowhere. The ending looks like they just ran out of time and decided to end it where they did. That it takes place in Italy was another reason I gave it a viewing, but if that is how truly bleak Genoa is, it won't be on any of my future travel plans. In summary, that is 1 and a half hours of my life that I will never get back. Use yours more wisely and skip this meaningless movie....