perla haney-jardine Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Here's a movie that deals with death and grief without hysterics, dramatic speeches or showy, Oscar-grubbing performances. Michael Winterbottom's Genova has a logline that sounds maudlin and turgid – after she inadvertently causes a car accident that kills her mother, a young girl starts seeing mom's ghost – but the movie turns out to be understated, down-to-earth, quietly sad. This is Winterbottom's most intimate film since 9 Songs, and one of the highlights of his career.

Genova has the wherewithal to show its characters dealing with loss in ways that aren't inherently cinematic. It would have been very striking, for example, to have the newly motherless children – the teenage Kelly (Willa Holland) and the preteen Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine) – scream, rage at the world, and slam doors in the face of their well-intentioned father Joe (Colin Firth) before concluding that Family Sticks Together. And in a film like this, I would have guessed that Joe would spiral into an alcoholic depression, or perhaps start a tumultuous, guilt-ridden affair with the old college friend (Catherine Keener) who comes back into his life.

Those are the arcs I would have expected to see. But though a couple doors do get slammed, Winterbottom's characters aren't here to amuse us or push our buttons. Their reactions to the tragedy and their ways of adjusting to a new life in the titular city all paint a much more nuanced picture – and the effect is more heartbreaking than any number of manipulative stunts could have achieved.

Hope Davis has had a pretty remarkably consistent career considering the amount of work she's done, giving understated performances in a variety of great films. I loved her in two recent little-seen gems: The Matador and The Weather Man, and especially in American Splendor and About Schmidt -- which is one of my favorite films. She's got two movies due out this year: John August's The Nines, which I told you a bit about here, and Charlie Bartlett, a comedy with Robert Downey, Jr, due out August 3rd. Today brings more word on two upcoming projects for Davis. First, she has joined Synecdoche, New York, screenwriter extraordinaire Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. Philip Seymour Hoffman will star and Davis joins an excellent (and very pale!) female supporting cast that includes Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, and Tilda Swinton. Hoffman will play "a theater director in crisis over work and the women in his life," Davis will play his therapist. Synecdoche begins shooting this month.

After that project wraps, Davis will move on to Genova, a new film from Michael Winterbottom, director of the great Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and 24 Hour Party People. Winterbottom also directed Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart, out this summer -- check out James' Cannes review of that film here. Monika told you about Davis' addition to the Genova cast last week. That film is a ghost story said to have mystery and horror elements. It tells the story of "a British man who moves with his two American daughters to Italy as he tries to recover from his wife's death." Davis will star alongside Colin Firth, Willa Holland of The OC and Perla Haney-Jardine of Spider-Man 3. Catherine Keener is in that one as well -- maybe she and Davis can share a cab from New York to Italy after the Kaufman film wraps.

I have to say that I love Michael Winterbottom's range. It's not every man who Welcome to Sarajevo, The Claim, 24 Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story, 9 Songs and A Mighty Heart on their resume. Not to mention the fact that he's trucking along with the movie making. He's got the upcoming Angelina Jolie flick, A Mighty Heart, on the way, as well as another true-story, overseas production, Murder in Samarkand, in the works. But in between the political turmoil, Winterbottom is looking into a ghostly story named Genova, as Christopher Campbell alerted us about in November.

The film is about a man who loses his wife and moves to Italy with his teen daughters, while suffering from haunting ghosts of his past. Colin Firth has been with the project for a while, but now the rest of the cast has been fleshed out. His co-stars are The Weather Man's Hope Davis and The 40 Year Old Virgin love interest Catherine Keener, and presumably one of them will be the wife who widowed him. As for his daughters, I assume they are the next two in the cast -- teen actress Willa Holland, who played Kaitlin Cooper on The O.C., and Perla Haney-Jardine, who was most recently Penny Marko in Spider-Man 3. Of course, Winterbottom says of the choices: "I am very excited about working with such wonderful actors in such a beautiful city. It is a story I have been working on for a while." The movie will begin shooting at the end of next month in, of course, Genova, Italy, as well as Boston. But I agree with Campbell -- I'm hoping gets back to the comedies before he gets into a drama groove.