Review of Genova

When a new Michael Winterbottom film comes out it is always interesting to see where exactly he is going to go with it. Certainly Winterbottom has one of the most diverse C.V.'s in the cinema with things ranging as far as Tristram Shandy to Welcome to Sarajevo to 24 Hour Party People, to Code 46. With Genova, he explores the rhythms, sites, beauty and danger of the large Italian city from three perspectives, a young girl, a teenager and a middle-aged university professor. All three of these people are in the same family, one recently stricken with the loss of the mother/wife. Naturally lit and laced with some stomach clenching intense moments, the film casually recalls Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now filtered though aspects of intimate Winterbottom's own urban wanderings of A Mighty Heart, where he burrowed into strange corners of Karachi. The film gives us a curious mixture of storytelling types. It is graceful drama on the grieving process merged, both smoothly and meticulously, with an intimate documentary style and a novel execution of maximum suspense. Sensitive parents beware, while Genova is attractively interspersed with honesty, the film is really quite nerve wracking.