| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Colin Firth | ... | ||
| Perla Haney-Jardine | ... | ||
| Willa Holland | ... | ||
| Catherine Keener | ... | ||
| Hope Davis | ... |
Marianne
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Margherita Romeo | ... |
Rosa
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| Alessandro Giuggioli | ... |
Lorenzo
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Dante Ciari | ... |
Fabio
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Gherardo Crucitti | ... |
Mauro
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Monica Bennati | ... |
Monica
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Angelica Moretti | ... |
Angelica
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Carlo Moretti | ... |
Carlo
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| Sara Stewart | ... |
Susanna
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| James Laurenson | ... |
Marianne's Father
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| Gary Wilmes | ... |
Danny
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How do children respond to tragedy? On an icy road near Chicago, Marianne dies in a crash, leaving Joe and their daughters, Kelly, about 16, and Mary, about 9. That summer, a friend from Joe's graduate student days, 20 years before, arranges a teaching job for him in Genoa. When they arrive in June, Joe starts teaching and the girls have the summer before school starts: Kelly quickly falls in with youths her age; their club and beach life leads to sexual awakening. Mary, burdened by guilt for her mother's death, is solitary. The girls take piano lessons, Mary draws, and she also sees and talks to her mother. Joe asks them, "Are you okay?", but is that enough? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Without reiterating what was said above about this movie, I would like to add that I was looking forward to watching this film...the cast/location and the work of the excellent director Michael Winterbottom etc...It had a vague shadow of 'Don't look Now' about the storyline from the beginning. A stay in different surroundings (Italy again) to dim the heartbreak of loss...or perhaps that's how I saw it? So consequently I sat there waiting for the story to unfold and put a spin on what we expect to happen to this family in a foreign European country....and I sat there and sat there....and guess what? nothing actually happens! and I mean nothing!! You are not even given the chance to get into the characters as they are so 1 dimensional and vacuous..You are led to believe from the pace of the movie that something was going to happen to turn the whole film on it's head...The eldest daughters flirtation with the local vespa boys, had great scope to take the movie in another direction, the youngest daughters visions of her dead mother ended up being a fruitless and pointless exercise, the fathers attempts at being seduced by one of his female students felt ridiculous given his age. It felt as if the script had a last recall made where they decided at the last minute to eradicated any guts to the story and went for paring it down to a bare minimum to no effect. When the credits started to roll (unexpectedly) you can't help but feel robbed of your time spent sat watching this pile of rubbish.