Liam Neeson and his real-life son, Micheál Richardson, star together as father and child in the film that will do nothing but ramp up your desire to visit Tuscany. Made in Italy is the brainchild of writer-director James D’Arcy, an actor with an eye for storytelling and painting visual landscapes with heart-melting colors met with emotive stirring performances from its leads.
Richardson, whose own mother Natasha Richardson perished in a ski accident and one cannot help but feel the raw power of father and son reeling from art imitating life film that had us thinking often of Neeson’s dearly departed wife, shines in his first true headlining role. You’ve seen him before, in Vox Lux and Cold Pursuit, and he makes an impressive leading man debut as the story centers and is driven by his dreams and demons.
Richardson is Jack, who is getting a divorce and needs some money fast so he can purchase the art gallery he manages. His wife’s parents are going to sell the space and he wants to buy it to keep a job he adores. Jack’s only financial option, at least one that can be achieved in 30 days, is to sell the Tuscany, Italy home that he and his father co-own. It was his late mother’s familial homestead and heading to the rich landscape of the country is a mission of simultaneous urgency and necessity. With his father and him distant, since after the car accident that claimed mother’s life, fixing up this run down villa will be the least of the challenges on this trip.
Neeson plays his Robert with an outer shell that appears strong and virile, yet underneath this is a man still mourning the tragic loss of his wife, his best friend, and the mother of his son. He’s a famous painter and sadly, Robert hasn’t painted much since his horrific loss changed his reality. It is a commanding turn by the veteran actor, particularly in scenes with his real-life child opposite him. That emotional bareness is raw and real and rightly so, these two famously lost the same figure that is portrayed in the film, in their own lives. Neeson has been quite the action hero since Taken, but what has never waned is his innate ability to draw audiences into his character’s tapestry of soul. It is front and center with a character who is quite complicated, yet only divulges tiny atoms of their truths in teaspoons as the story progresses.
His partner in this father-son dance has an impeccable arc—from a despaired husband who is desperately desiring to know his father, something he hasn’t been able to do since he was a boy—to the scarred soul in search of a purpose. It’s a long road to traverse to bonding, and they do not have much time. Yet, D’Arcy weaves a web in Made in Italy that believably chronicles a familial bond gone wrong and how one can safely meld what has been broken. Richardson is his father’s son, but he firmly strikes out on his own with a wildly different approach to the art of acting that showcases a talent just beginning its ascent. And yes, those scenes with his father where they explore the loss of a mother and wife, well… those equally pull your heartstrings as loosen up those tear ducts until they flood.
The writer-director makes his directorial debut with this deeply personal film. After starring in films such as Cloud Atlas and Dunkirk, he leaps behind the camera and illustrates that his command of the visual arts is strong. He and cinematographer Mike Eley have joined forces and captured a part of the world that is pretty hard to screw up the gorgeous locales, both inside with Tuscan architecture and outside with Mother Nature’s majesty. It is a beautiful film that if it not for Covid-19, would have trips to Italy being booked en masse. What else I loved that D’Arcy took to the time to emphasize was the food of the region. This writer had the same reaction as all the Englishmen visiting the region when eating Italian delicacies. That doesn’t take much acting! Just put some in your mouth and let your body do the rest. There is a physical reaction to impeccably cooked Italian food and that comes through in Made in Italy, as much as the landscape and jaw-dropping views.
D’Arcy’s script is a little weak in that it doesn’t avoid many of the tropes that exist in a film that mirrors the writer-director’s. I’ve seen this storytelling landscape in various forms over the years, such as Ridley Scott’s A Good Year starring Russell Crowe as an Englishmen who heads to the European continent with the intension of selling a winery, only to fall in love with the region as he loses his emotional and personal baggage and finds peace.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a trope that is worth revisiting, especially during these tough times. Connecting with family, returning to our roots to fan those personal expansion flames is something many are doing as we collectively sit in isolation. Made in Italy will leave you smiling, wiping away some tears and heading right into the kitchen to craft your own Italian feast.
Grade: B