La mia casa in Umbria

I reserve 10 out of ten for "Tea With Mussolini". Dame Maggie gives another outstanding performance as a writer who encounters a bomb on a train. It was a way to introduce the 4 main characters (not including the fabulous Quinty) who we come to love. The clever voice overs weave a beautiful thread (by Maggie of course) tieing together a story of mutual care and affection. Mrs Delahunty loves a drink or 15 and her hospitality extends to anyone within her reach. Has she become a lonely old lady who just wants company in her secluded villa? Does it really matter that there may be a dark secret amongst her guests? No! The outside dinner scene the night before the girl Aimee was due to leave was stunning. I so hoped she wouldn't go and that the "family" would stay together........

I'd wath this again and again and will add it to my extensive collection. GO DAME MAGGIE!

This film would immediately appeal to anyone addicted to Maggie Smith and the idyllic Italian countryside of Umbria, but it has unexpected delights to offer in its unassuming, almost art-house, flavour, and the low-key, but affecting, performances of excellent actors Timothy Spall and Ronnie Barker. Chris Cooper is rather wooden, but his academic, unemotional character casts a strong contrast to the hapless vagaries of Maggie Smith's Emily Delahuntey, and therefore works well.

Suspension of disbelief is required for the over-imaginative plot, almost out of one of Emily's romance novels. But the pleasure of such a film is simple, and simple pleasures can entertain as much as the richer, more complex enjoyment of films it might be compared with such as 'Tea With Mussolini' (which, of course, is a much fuller film in terms of plot, characters, script, and drama). 'Enchanted April' also comes to mind as another film where the Italian countryside is almost a character of the film and much more than a backdrop.

A very pleasant interlude for a winter's afternoon, or Spring evening, and Maggie Smith is as mannered and original as ever. I especially loved her flowing clothes, which suited her and her character very well.

The movie was wonderful. 'My House in Umbria' was like a fresh breath of Italian countryside air, or taking a bite into a delicious pie in a terrace in Italy. The sites were breathtaking, even if they were seen from my television. The story was understandable and intriguing. The characters were fun. Mrs. Delahunty, a romantic novelist, with her numerous names and vibrant personality; i found myself wanting to be like her - minus the excessive drinking and smoking. There were also the many friends she had made on a train which had been in an accident. These strangers put together in Mrs.Delahunty's villa. Werner, the general, and Aimee (a young face who was very captivating on screen), and Quinty. All these characters truly made the film. BUT the only stain in the wonderful fabric that is this movie was Chris Cooper's character, Mr. Tom River-something. I found him rather pompus but a necessary element in the movie. I can't find more words to describe the movie. The scenes of Italian cities and towns were wonderful. oh, and mrs.delahunty's thoughts were well illustrated on screen. All in all i truly liked the movie. I think this movie will delight many people.

Having just seen this film in the cinema, I have to say it didn't flag at all, and it was graced by one of Maggie Smith's greatest performances - and which fully deserved her Emmy award. The film dramatises the necessary illusions with which we need to live our lives. For Emily Delahunty, alcohol and the escapism of the romance fiction she writes are the props to her very existence. To keep sane the illusion of happiness sometimes is necessary to keep going. And yet, out of tragedy comes the hint of salvation: some kind of family, and a girl who becomes a symbol of how she can have hope for the future. This is not a cosy film, as some misguided critics have labelled it. It is not gardens, Italy, cups of tea: it is a film of illusion, escapism, isolation and the human spirit in the face of tragedy and death. Released in the UK after the quaint "Ladies in Lavender" it was unfortunately seen by the critics as exactly the same kind of film - and so missing the point completely.

Playing the troubled alcoholic, a vulnerable ageing romance novelist, Smith is on amazing form. Never mannered, she is perfect in her second role in a William Trevor novella (her first was in the 1984 "Mrs Silly" for ITV in the UK, for which she was nominated for a BAFTA). Using those expressive eyes, and a crushed, occasionally slurred voice, she draws you into the film. If this makes me sound like a Smith groupie, I have to point out that I disliked intensely this actress's mannered caricatures in such films as "Tea with Mussolini" or "Washington Square" (though, faced with the awful scripts, maybe she decided just to push it for laughs...). That is why she deserves recognition for this film: she reminds us that, with the right material, she can be the best - and not just the witty old bat in "Gosford Park" or the the stern teacher in "Harry Potter". After Smith's Emmy award, it was criminal that Meryl Streep robbed Dame Maggie at the Golden Globes for her raiding of the dressing-up box in "Angels in America".

For the supporting cast, Ronnie Barker, Timothy Spall, and Chris Cooper are all superb: understated, natural, and working in a brilliant ensemble. They have such rapport with Smith that the film just whizzes by.

Not since "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" has Maggie Smith, nor maybe any other actress, created a character as memorable as Mrs. Emily Delahunty in "My House in Umbria." Smith appears in virutally every scene and does a lot of voice-over narration, too boot. Every frame is a pleasure. "My House in Umbria" is smart, funny, and bittersweet. Chris Cooper has become everybody's choice to play detestable characters. Here, he does it again as the repressed, unhappy, and toweringly rude Tom Riversmith. Because of Riversmith's importance to the plot, though, an actor with Cooper's considerable skill was required to make the movie work. Highly recommended, 9 out of 10.