the audience applauded

Memorable, crazy movie

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

If you are just discovering the career of Maggie Smith outside of the "Harry Potter" films and the "Downton Abbey" TV series, I can assure you that your hours of film viewing will be as pleasurable as all six seasons of "Downton". Even with sometimes weak scripts, she's riveting, able to give substance to missed opportunities, always presented to her with the intention of artistic integrity or something of class. That's not the case here, an award winning cable TV movie that shows the lady in her, minus snarky remarks and filled with a huge amount of love.Dame Maggie is a novelist who manages to survive a bombing on the train she's traveling on, and unlike her cold spinster in "A Room With a View", she is filled with hospitality, offering other survivors the openness if her house in Umbria. The object of the bulk of her attention is the young Emmy Clarke, who had showed kindness to Smith before the sudden terrorist attack. However, for an old General (Ronnie Barker) and a handsome, quiet German young man, Smith has time for everybody, and they all come to adore her. Chris Cooper is outstanding as Clarke's emotionally distant uncle who shows up out of the blue and ends up the focus of Smith's attention to delay his taking of Clarke away. I could listen to Dame Maggie narrate a children's reader. That voice has mesmerized me for over 40 years. She's of course very funny when rolling off a bitchy quip, and in drama, is heartbreaking. Here, she's a glamorous earth mother, an example of all what is good and the character shows it in spades to the emotionally wounded Clarke. Romantic, dipsomaniac, interfering (without being imperious) and totally truthful. Her past guides her every decision, especially as she recalls her growing up without real love from parents who weren't really her parents, and wanting to give Clarke the love she never had. Even drunk, she has more truth in her than Cooper's cold college teacher. (Don't you dare refer to him as a professor!)Veteran actor Giancarlo Gianinni as a local officer and Benno Fürmann are also featured, with Furmann delivering a very layered performance as a young German man whose girlfriend was killed in the blast. Much mystery is given to indicate suspicion that he was involved, but for a time, he's taken in by Smith's hospitality, showing great gentility to both her and Clarke in spite of possible terrorist leanings. Timothy Spall offers a funny, demanding and imperious performance as Smith's assistant who runs her more than she manages him. Beautiful scenery and some technical effects involving the explosion, some flashbacks, and even human emotion makes this the type of period drama that will grab you instantly and not let go. By the time this even hits half an hour, you may (like me) want to give Maggie's character a hug.

It is interesting that Chris Cooper should show up in this glossy HBO production (as an uptight American college professor) – he was later to play a leading role in "Adaptation", Charlie Kaufman's brilliant and quirky take on the perils of adapting fine literary properties to the silver screen. What seems to have happened here is that two veteran TV hacks, Richard Loncraine and Hugh Whitemore have got hold of an elegiac novella by the fine Anglo-Irish author William Trevor and turned it into something suitable for Sunday night HBO TV audiences. I was going to say "mush", but that would do a disservice to the cast, who are excellent, and the great location shooting. Definitely though, this film is less that the sum of its parts and much of the poignancy of Trevor's novella has been lost. Yet apart from the final scenes the producers have stuck fairly closely to Trevor's storyline, and Maggie Smith in particular manages to create a character, Emily Delahunty, at least recognizable from the novel, a vibrant but rather hollowed out survivor of a tough and colourful life.It is 1987 (according to the novella, anyway – the film is a bit vaguer about time) and Mrs Delahunty "56 years old" lives in Umbria where she lets out rooms in her magnificent country villa and churns out "Romance novels" a la Barbara Cartland. She is unlucky enough to be caught in a bomb explosion on the Roma-Milano express which kills several passengers in her compartment (though no-one else). Recovering in hospital she invites the survivors back to her villa, where she (and they) are looked after by her staff, including her general factotum, an eccentric Irishman called Quinty (Timothy Spall. The survivors are an elderly English gent, called the General (Ronnie Barker), a young German man with severe burns, Werner (Otlar in the book and played here by Benno Furmann) and Aimee (Emmy Clarke), a beautiful eight year old, who is physically unharmed but unable to speak after her parents have died in the explosion. The healing effects of the landscape and good living restore the spirits of the survivors but then Aimee's uptight pill of an uncle (Chris Cooper) arrives to take her back to America. Mrs Delahunty, haunted both by dreams of her own past and other things, tries desperately to keep Aimee. In the meantime the Italian plod, in the person of Inspector Girotti (Giancarlo Gianini) is investigating the bomb blast, and the finger of suspicion is pointing at Werner.I won't reveal the ending but pretty obviously it is at variance with the book's. If it had followed the book, this would have been a minor gem. As it was made, it is indeed further evidence of the perils of the adaptation of literary properties to film. The acting's faultless, the scenery lovely, but the ending's a cop-out.

Emily (Maggie Smith) writes romance novels, fairly successfully. Although British by birth, she lives in Umbria, Italy in a big and beautiful house/mansion. When traveling one day on a train, she finds herself in a compartment with some nice folks, among them, a lovely little girl. All of a sudden, a bomb explodes. Emily survives, as does Amy, the young girl, an older retired officer, and a young German man. After their stays in the hospital, Emily welcomes all of these survivors to continue their recovery at her house. Amy, very traumatized by the events, does not speak, yet she clings to Emily. Everything is going along quite nicely when, out of the blue, they learn Amy has an uncle in America. Will he come to get her? This is a most unusual story but a very fine one. Smith is superb as the aging writer and the rest of the cast is wonderful, too. The scenery in Italy is loveliness indeed and makes for a very beautiful movie. The script is elegant but not stuffy. All in all, if you loved Under the Tuscan Sun or Enchanted April, you will enjoy this film, yes. But, even if you have never taken a videotrip to Italy, you will be happy you carried this film home from the video store or library. It is enchanting fare with an extraordinary tale of human relationships.

Too many reviews here and in print misinterpret My House in Umbria as another sweet movie in the Big Scenery genre, too few emphasize the film's essential theme of fictions and illusions. And yet, are they really illusions when you are aware of weaving them? Emily Delahunty has just experienced something absolutely horrific and over the course of the film, we learn too of her early losses and calamities. Somewhere along the line, she chose happiness; in fact, she chooses it time and again. Her foil in the movie is the Chris Cooper character, a cold man whose scientific mind brooks no illusions. She's persistent with him. She wants to draw him out and draw him in, seducing him into her enchanted world view. She may succeed a little. She'll certainly succeed with anyone who mindfully watches this tale unfold. If this is a fairy tale, it's a stunningly contemporary one. We who rise every morning and meet each day's challenges with some enthusiasm, we who continue to love, work and create in a world threatened by terrorism, live this fairy tale too.