A Summer in Genoa

A woman dies in a car accident, leaving a husband and pre-teen and teenage daughters. Hoping that a change of scene will get them past the grief, the father (Colin Firth) takes them to Genoa, where he will teach and they will learn Italian and take piano lessons. Genoa has beautiful beaches full of beautiful boys for the teenager, lovely churches and architecture for the younger girl, about a million Vespas, and a rat maze of deeply creepy alleys, some no more than four feet wide, where the Vespas barrel through, and the sight of these alleys leaves us always a little uneasy for these girls. It’s superbly well acted by all concerned, but not really satisfying. I know, “closure” is never really achieved in real life, and it isn’t here, and the small progress these three make is gratifying, but I wanted more. I don’t have a solution, and I enjoyed the film, but I wanted more.