Michael Winterbottom’s movie plays expertly, even manipulatively, upon parental fears.
I watched it in a Hitchcockian state of constant anxiety. The tension stems from the feeling that something tragic is about to happen to the two vulnerable young girls at the heart of the story as single parent Colin Firth looks on helplessly.
One of the girls is a precocious teenager experimenting with sex, the other is about 10 and is traumatised by the death of her mother in a car accident.
At various points the threats include rape, abduction, drowning and pregnancy.
The city of Genova, with its narrow, litter strewn alleyways and seedy townsfolk adds to the sense of menace. Until I saw this movie I had thought I’d like to visit this city; I’m not so sure now.
Winterbottom builds an incredibly claustrophobic atmosphere much like that created in Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. There are actually quite a few similarities between these two films – in both there is a death in the family, they each share an Italian setting (in Roeg it was Venice) and a strong supernatural dimension.
This last point is the strongest part of Don’t Look Now but the weakest aspect of Genova. The appearance of the dead mother’s ghost seems an unnecessarily melodramatic touch especially since the intensity of the story is built around the ordinariness of the lives. The humdrum, un-glossy quality is more emphatic because of Winterbottom’s decision to shoot most of the key scenes using a small hand-held camera. The careful attention to banal detail means that it is as if we are eavesdropping on this family drama. Through this documentary format the best moments are when nothing much is happening, just people getting on with their lives. It falls apart when Winterbottom tries to squeeze in something approaching a plot.
