My House in Umbria | |
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Original theatrical poster
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Directed by | Richard Loncraine |
Produced by | Robert Allan Ackerman |
Written by |
William Trevor (original novel) Hugh Whitemore (screenplay) |
Starring |
Maggie Smith Ronnie Barker Chris Cooper Timothy Spall Giancarlo Giannini Benno Fürmann |
Music by | Claudio Capponi |
Cinematography | Marco Pontecorvo |
Edited by | Humphrey Dixon |
Distributed by | HBO |
Release date
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Running time
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109 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
My House in Umbria is a 2003 HBO made-for-television movie, based on the novella of the same name by William Trevor and published along with another novella in the volume Two Lives. The film stars Maggie Smith and was directed by Richard Loncraine.
Emily Delahunty (Maggie Smith) is an eccentric British romance novelist who lives in Umbria in central Italy, where she runs a pensione for tourists. Mrs Delahunty settled in Italy to flee from a somewhat traumatic past which still haunts her, and lives alone apart from a few servants and her manager Quinty (Timothy Spall). One day while taking a shopping trip to Florence, the train she is on is bombed by terrorists. After she wakes up in a hospital, she invites three of the other survivors of the disaster to stay at her villa for recuperation. Of these are "the General" (Ronnie Barker) a retired British Army veteran, Werner (Benno Fürmann), a young German photographer, and Aimee (Emmy Clarke), a young American girl who has now become mute after her parents were both killed in the explosion.
As the group recover from their ordeal (in which the General lost his daughter, and Werner lost his girlfriend and suffered considerable burns to his arm), the explosion is being investigated by Inspector Girotti (Giancarlo Giannini), a local policeman. Responding to the warmth and kindness of Mrs Delahunty and the others, Aimee begins to speak again, while the local authorities seek out any relatives who might be able to take her in. They eventually locate her uncle, Thomas Riversmith (Chris Cooper), a university professor in the US. He agrees to take Aimee back to the USA to live with his wife and himself, though they have little time for (and no experience with) raising children and are particularly concerned about trying to raise a child who has been through such a traumatic experience. Via flashbacks it is revealed that Mrs. Delahunty was an orphan who was molested as a child by her adoptive father. At a young age she fled England with a travelling salesman and spent years living as a prostitute before Quinty convinced her to move to Italy.