Year Released: 2020
Directed by: James D’Arcy
Starring: Liam Neeson, Micheal Richardson, Valeria Bilello, Lindsay Duncan
(R, 93 min.)
Genre: Drama, Comedy

It starts out crass and cliched, but it ends subtle and sweet. Nothing like financial ruin to mend fences between an estranged father and son – not to mention a crumbling estate in sunny Italy that just might save them both.

Made in Italy is a turn from Liam Neesom’s vendetta/revenge films of recent years. As Robert Foster he is a more fully realized character here, although our first shot of him at his unkempt artist studio where a half-clad woman emerges from his bedroom shows no hints of that. Any wonders about whether this is a one night stand are confirmed when he introduces her to his grown son Jack (Michael Richardson) and calls her the wrong name. The fact that his son is not surprised lets us know this is not Dad’s first rodeo, either.

By the way, the two leads are real life father and son, Michael Richardson being the son of Neeson and Natasha Richardson, as well as the grandson of famed Vanessa Redgrave, and part of that regal family of acting greats. The fact that Neeson is a widower in the film mirrors reality, too, since the death of his beloved Natasha has haunted him ever since she died from a skiiing injury in 2009.

In the film the pain and truth of their real lives is just one element keeping father and son apart. Although Jack’s wealthy wife is planning to divorce him and take away his gig as manager of the gallery she owns with her parents, he tells Dad that his wife Ruth “is fine.” This scenario reminds Different Drummer of a great 1990 Italian film called Everybody’s Fine/ Stanno Tutti Bene starring Marcello Mastroianni as an elderly widower who decides to take a trip across Italy to visit each of his five grown children. They tell him “everything is fine,” although in reality everything in their lives is really a mess.

Robert has his secrets, too, and it is the crumbling house that he owned with his Italian wife that reveals them at last. Especially the huge wall art painted in the living room, Robert’s last real painting done shortly after his wife died in a car crash some 20 years earlier. It is a black abyss as ugly and terrifying as his unremitting grief. The realtor says it seems to have been painted by Mussolini.

Natalia (Valeria Bilello), a talented chef and owner of a small restaurant, also acts to restore some happiness to both father and son. Part of that is her delicious cooking, especially her trademark risotto. It restores a famished Jack at his wits end to repair the shambles of his life and the decrepit estate, as does her warmth and beauty.

Kate (Lindsey Dunkin) as the blunt realtor who nags them over the restoration is also a surprise. The house and its troubled owners are just a $ale for her, it seems at first. But like the good bones of the old house, she, too reveals, some inner depth and pain.

So take a vicarious trip to Italy and let it take the chill out of your winter bones as you laugh and cry at the assortment of fools rushing in to recapture purpose and joy. Sure, it’s not Schindler’s List (that is coming tomorrow), but I know you will like it.