Made In Italy review: Liam Neeson’s family tragedy underpins new movie

Under the predictable, amiable new movie drama, Made In Italy, is the beating heart of star Liam Neeson’s real-life family tragedy.

Throughout the whole of Made In Italy, there’s an unspoken history that hangs over every moment.

Starring real-life father and son Liam Neeson and Micheál Richardson, Made In Italy would be a generically amiable yet entirely forgettable family drama if it wasn’t for the true tragedy in their history.

Written and directed by actor James D’Arcy (Agent Carter, Dunkirk, Cloud Atlas), Made In Italy’s emotional core is the fractured relationship between gallery manager Jack (Richardson) and his artist father Robert (Neeson).

Robert has some renown as a painter but hasn’t shown any work for some years – since his wife’s death two decades earlier, we find out.

That’s about how much time it’s been since Jack and Robert were last at the family’s Tuscan villa, which Jack is hoping to sell to fund a massive purchase.

Jack and Robert aren’t estranged exactly, but their interactions are perfunctory and frustrated, with the younger man harbouring a deep resentment towards his father for pushing him away after his mother’s death.

Father and son Liam Neeson and Micheál Richardson.

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The villa is dilapidated and the necessity for a quick sale means father and son will be forced to work together to spruce it up, while in the process working out their emotional blockages. Yes, that old chestnut.

The metaphor of restoring a formerly beloved family home full of happy memories to its glory, standing in for repairing a strained family relationship is hardly fresh. Nor are the requisite scenes of brown water spitting out of the disused taps or the creatures hiding in the kitchen cupboard.

These are well-trodden boards. As are the tropes of both men connecting with women in the town – Jack with Natalia (Valeria Bilello), the owner of a local restaurant, and Robert with expat real estate agent Kate (Lindsay Duncan, who was also in Under The Tuscan Sun).

Generic romance #1.

Generic romance #2.

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The surroundings are beautiful, as they should be in the Tuscan countryside, while the narrative hurtles towards its inevitable conclusion.

Scenes lurch from one to another with all the elegance and subtlety of one of those inflatable waving tube men, ticking boxes as it goes. The tonal shifts from comedic scenes to heavy emotional ones barely exist, which is a shame because the latter is where the heart is.

That it even has a heart has less to do with the writing or direction as it has to do with the horrible history Neeson and Richardson bring to their performances.

In 2009, Neeson’s wife and actor Natasha Richardson, 45, fell and sustained a head injury while having a skiing lesson at a resort in Canada. At first, she complained of headaches, refusing the ambulances that came.

When her condition worsened, she was flown to a hospital in New York where, two days later, she died of a haematoma.

Micheál was only 13 years old at the time. In 2018, he changed his surname from Neeson to Richardson as tribute to his late mother.

Emotional reckoning.

That real-life lived experience of loss is threaded through certain scenes in Made In Italy in which the fictional father and son pair finally confront their shared grief in losing the film’s fictional wife and mother character, Raffaella.

They’re wrenching and palpable scenes, but they only work because of what you know of Neeson and Richardson’s life. They spark because of that layer of knowledge a viewer brings to the experience – they certainly don’t spark because of the stilted dialogue.

Instead what those scenes of reckoning do is highlight how lacking the rest of Made In Italy is.

Rating: 2.5/5

Made In Italy is in cinemas from Thursday, August 12

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