Genova
Michael Winterbottom | UK | 2008
94 min

The young girl, Mary, is almost certainly the stupidest child character of 2008. Children in movies, like in real life, are always a bit retarded and act like morons, but Mary’s idiocy is too stupid even for a child. Her mother is driving the car, and she and her older sister are in the back seat (why is the teenager not in the passenger seat? Seems a bit rude to me). The girls are playing an obnoxious game, which is to put their hands over their eyes and guess which car passes by next. The older girl gets it right every time but Mary doesn’t, and the whole family is having fun and laughing when Mary decides to put her hands over her mother’s eyes…while she is driving.

They have an accident, and the mother dies. What kind of fucking child does that? What is wrong with her?

The family sans dead mommy moves to Genova in Italy to start a new life, and the film is about them trying to overcome their loss in the most painfully boring way possible. They go to the beach, go on drives, and occasionally, Mary wakes up crying for mommy. A few times the film teases us with a possibility of something interesting happening (is Mary going to get lose in the forest! The teenager is walking in this seedy alley, will something happen to her!) but all scenes end uneventfully.

Any child that puts her hand over the eyes of a driver deserves a dead mommy. And any family that brings up such a stupid child deserves her.