My House in Umbria

My House in Umbria (2003)
Director: Richard Loncraine
Actors: Maggie Smith, Chris Cooper, Benno Furmann

Synopsis: A group of individuals recovering from a terrorist attack on a train, recuperate in a palatial Umbrian residence.

Review: This is a lazy, dull and somewhat artless heritage picture that could have totally bombed without Maggie Smith’s compelling presence at the centre of it. Her performance and characterisation off very few narrative scraps, keeps at bay the encroaching banalities of the script (about train-bomb survivors recuperating at her idyllic Umbrian residence). The incredibly pat ending – that washes over Smith’s sinister portrayal of her own unreliable narrator – rewards sentimentality and the most complex-free of resolutions to all the various plot strands developed throughout the film. (February 2008)