{"id":1680,"date":"2009-05-11T09:50:55","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T08:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/blog\/?p=1680"},"modified":"2015-03-28T11:22:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-28T11:22:09","slug":"colin-firth-on-making-genova-while-mucking-about-in-tights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=1680","title":{"rendered":"Colin Firth on ‘A Summer in Genoa’ and spandex tights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"genova<\/a>By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 It was a demonstration of Colin Firth\u2019s considerable acting range when he donned Spandex tights and cavorted about to Abba tunes at Pinewood Studios for\u00a0the monster hit \u201cMamma Mia!\u201d. An even greater testament to the British actor\u2019s professionalism, however, was that at the time he had to dash\u00a0back and forth to Italy to play a bereaved father in Michael Winterbottom\u2019s sombre drama\u00a0“A Summer in Genoa”.<\/p>\n

\u201cMamma Mia!\u201d went to No. 1 with a bullet upon its release both in theatres and on disc, but \u201cGenova\u201d, which was in theatres in March and is due soon on disc from Metrodome Distribution, took a lot more nurturing.<\/p>\n

Firth plays the father of two daughters, played by Willa Holland (\u201cThe O.C.\u201d) and Perla Haney-Jardine (\u201cSpider-Man 3\u201d), who are still mourning the death of their mother when he takes them on a year\u2019s teaching contract in the Italian city. The film made the rounds of film festivals from Toronto to San Sebastian and Warsaw to Hong Kong before its release.<\/p>\n

It also got a splash at last year\u2019s London International Film Festival and even though \u201cMamma Mia!\u201d got all the attention, Firth thought enough of the picture to promote it with enthusiasm including a screening and Q&A at London\u2019s Curzon Soho.<\/p>\n

\"genova2<\/a><\/p>\n

Firth\u2019s working relationship with British director Winterbottom, whose wide range of films include \u201c24 Hour Party People\u201d, \u201cA Mighty Heart\u201d and the upcoming documentary \u201cThe Shock Doctrine\u201d, goes back to \u201cWelcome to Sarajevo\u201d more than 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

Firth says, \u201cI found him personally extremely engaging and also his films were so outstanding and outside the kind of stuff I\u2019m associated with. His work is so diverse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that, he did not sign on for that film: \u201cI didn\u2019t find the script that interesting but I found the film to be brilliant, and that\u2019s a very, very unusual thing. All the years of experience that I have tell me that the script determines most of it. Not that \u2018Sarajevo\u2019 was a bad script, just that it didn\u2019t engage me, but the film did. Michael took a script that I hadn\u2019t seen in it what he obviously had, and from then on I was sort of hooked by his work and so I responded to \u2018Genova\u2019 before I even read it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Firth found Winterbottom\u2019s methods of working quite different from what he was used to: \u201cWhen he talks to you, he doesn\u2019t really expound or theorise. He creates these extraordinary things with all these visions going on but he doesn\u2019t give much away, there\u2019s no airy-fairy poetry about it.”<\/p>\n

In the film, the busy and imposing city of Genova is very much a character as the father and his daughters seek to recover from their loss and there are scenes where the lost loved one is seen in visions. \u201cI said, \u2018Isn\u2019t this \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now\u201d?\u2019\u201d Firth says, and adds\u00a0that Winterbottom did not take exception to his reference to the famous Nicolas Roeg film.<\/p>\n

Firth says: \u201cHe didn\u2019t mind because his idea was clearly much more personal. It starts with Genova and it very much ends with Genova. Genova isn\u2019t just the starting point that fades into the background. That city is as much a character in the film as anybody.”<\/p>\n

The director\u2019s guerrilla shooting style was also different, especially compared to the big-budget luxuries of the Abba film. For \u201cGenova\u201d, he shot entirely on location with a tiny DV camera and no lights, no extras and no security. That held true for scenes on an airplane, in the family\u2019s claustrophobic apartment, and on the packed beach at Camogli, Genova\u2019s nearby seaside resort.<\/p>\n

Firth says, \u201cWe were on that crowded beach and I can\u2019t tell you how much of a nightmare I found that to be. I find it a nightmare to be on a crowded beach anywhere, especially in Italy, even when there aren\u2019t cameras around. Horrible!\u201d<\/p>\n

He says, though, that he accepted the challenge of going from a big set to no set at all as being part of an actor\u2019s job definition: \u201cI thought of those people in weekly rep in the old days when you weren\u2019t quite sure if it was \u2018Othello\u2019 tonight or \u2018Hamlet, and they do the whole role. It was completely absurd. There are scenes in \u2018Genova\u2019 where I had to act in that intimate environment with a small family while I was still aching from spandex.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story appeared in Cue Entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 It was a demonstration of Colin Firth\u2019s considerable acting range when he donned Spandex tights and cavorted about to Abba tunes at Pinewood Studios for\u00a0the monster hit \u201cMamma Mia!\u201d. An even greater testament to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[93,138,464,870,3170,1241],"class_list":["post-1680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","tag-genova","tag-mamma-mia","tag-colin-firth","tag-michael-winterbottom","tag-perla-haney-jardine","tag-willa-holland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1680"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6313,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions\/6313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}