Jamie passion and passionfruit!

This film of Jeanine Meerapfel has the best intentions and some excellent features.  There is luminous photography, Greek music, the backdrop of the island of Symi and a solid central performance by Angela Molina.  The problem is that the story, which concerns a widow returning to the family home as the last of a line of a Spanish/Jewish family, doesn’t really go anywhere or come across as being anything very new or inspiring.  Ana returns to see old family friends, imagines reunions with old family members, trawls through memories, rediscovers Mediterranean cooking and fresh fish, has a fling with a young local with whom she has nothing in common in her grief and basically ends up not much further along than when she started as you’d expect.  The dialogue (in a variety of languages) is the most stilted feature and some rather obvious choices as to plot development weaken matters.  Rosanna Pastor does a nice number as Malena, Ana’s Galician mother and sings well too.  It is watchable, slow and ultimately less than it could have been in the hands of someone with a bit more spark.  Having said that, the flashbacks do work well.

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