Picturing the way forward
Neeson & son draw on personal history in ‘Made in Italy’
Liam Neeson puts down the gun and picks up a paint brush for “Made in Italy,” a dual romance/ father-son family drama from writer-director James D’Arcy, best known as an actor in such films as “Dunkirk,” making his feature debut. Neeson is reclusive multi-genre painter Robert Foster. Now, pay attention. Playing Neeson’s estranged son in the film is his real son Michaél Richardson, who looks like his dad. Richardson plays Jack Foster, who is separated from his wife, whose parents own the posh and trendy art gallery that Jack manages.
When his soon-to-be exwife informs Jack that her family is selling the gallery, Jack cooks up a desperate plot to sell a house in Tuscany co-owned by him and his father to buy the gallery, a house they haven’t visited since Jack’s mother was killed in a road accident. This means a trip to Tuscany with his brooding, uncommunicative
dad. When they get there, they find the classic money pit, complete with hole in the roof, piles of dust and debris, cracked plaster and a weasel, a Vespa and a large vine emanating from a window holding court.
A Brit expat-realtor arrives to help out. Her name is Kate, and she is played by the sublime Lindsay Duncan. When she sees the clotted, blood-colored mural Foster left behind on an interior wall she is aghast. “I had to put my pain somewhere,” is Foster’s explanation. The thing looks like a mad demon vision out of Franz Kline and “Suspiria.”
One of the more memorable potential buyers, a witchy Brit expat, does a pagan dance in the living area and when she rubs up against a counter top in the kitchen is horrified at the line of paint left across her genitals, a bad omen to Druids, apparently.
In addition to looking like Neeson, Richardson resembles a 25-year-old Hugh Grant. It is therefore entirely credible that he would “meet cute” Natalia (Ingrid Bergman lookalike Valeria Bilello of “Sens8”)) in a nearby town, a single mother and trattoria owner, whose ragu and risotto attracts large crowds of locals, including her ex-husband Marzio (Gian Marco Tavani).
“Made in Italy” unfolds almost exactly the way you expect it to (boisterous locals repairing the house montage, anyone?), and sometimes that is welcome and even a virtue (cue the Pavarotti, then the Bocelli.), although some of D’Arcy’s narrative details don’t hold up.
It is undeniably wrenching to watch Neeson plays scenes with his real son in which he recalls the shocking death of his beloved fictional wife. Neeson’s real wife and fellow actor Natasha Richardson, Richardson’s mother, died in 2009 in a freak accident. Thus, while it is nice to see Neeson take a break from showing off his “particular set of skills,” “Made in Italy” sports some weighty family resonance.
(“Made in Italy” contains profanity.)