Genova: Colin Firth interview

After strutting his stuff in the musical hit Mamma Mia! Colin Firth tones things down in Genova. He plays a single father mourning the death of his other half and struggling to rebuild family life with their two daughters in Italy. Matters are further complicated when one of the girls thinks she's seen a ghost... This isn't just another supernatural thriller, but the latest in a series of genre-defying works by director Michael Winterbottom.

What immediately struck you about the way Michael Winterbottom works? He's said to have a unique way of doing things...

Yeah, he does. It's not the first time I've made use of improvisation or worked in a very spare set. I'd worked with Dominic Savage a couple of years before and in some ways that helped me prepare for the way Michael works. Dominic doesn't write any dialogue at all, and he doesn't rehearse at all, you just have some stage directions and everything you try out is in front of a rolling camera. To that extent it is similar to Michael's work. Michael does work from a script though and, unlike Dominic who shoots on celluloid, Michael just shoots on a digital camera which actually meant that the film set was a very intimate and very spare environment. It was really just the four walls or the street. There were no lights, there were no cables, no paraphernalia which also meant there was no waiting around for people to light [the set] or build cranes or any of the other preparations you normally have to wait for. It was just us playing family really.

His camera is always moving and he doesn't map out the scenes. Did you find that aspect of it unnerving or freeing?

It's freeing because the whole challenge in my job is to try and suspend disbelief to the point where you're believable. So much on a film set is conspiring against that. To that extent theatre is easier to manage. That has its own difficulties but all the artifice of theatre is consistent; you're looking at the dark...and you're in control of the narrative and it's in the sequence that the audience is going to see it. A film set doesn't usually have any of the that. The things in your eye-line and the things that you have to deal with - the real stimuli around you - are constantly shifting; the weather might change, you're shooting out of sequence, you're shooting in tiny snippets and sometimes there's so much equipment in the way you can't see the other actor. You're also waiting for hours sometimes to get up and do some spontaneous bit of magic, then you're asked to reproduce it over and over again... The way Michael works means you don't have any of those problems. He shoots in sequence. Yes, there will be a guy there with a camera and a microphone, and you're not really the father of these children, but you can arrive at the point where you can believe it much more easily.

Does that looseness on set help particularly when you're working with children?

Yes, the trust got built up much more quickly than it otherwise would have because there's the time for it. People weren't going back to their hotel or trailer and waiting. We were just on the set all the time and Michael never says 'action' or 'cut'. He's sort of blurring your life with what's going on in front of the camera. If you show up at nine o'clock to the flat where you're filming a scene, the chances are the camera will be rolling from the time you walk in, and you just start. Sometimes I'd just be chatting with the girls and he'd be filming. He makes use of a script, but you're free to depart from it and he will be moving around you while you're doing what you're doing, and if you want to leave the room and go into another room and go out and take a bus, the camera will follow you if he thinks there's anything interesting to be gained by doing that.

Was there a chance to bond with the girls before you got to the set?

Not very long because I was doing Mamma Mia! so I was back and forth from Pinewood and Greece and all that. The time was very condensed but as I said there's nothing else going on. I mean you're not doing costume fittings and makeup tests, you're just doing that and you can move quite quickly getting to know each other. Michael did set up all sorts of exercises which were quite difficult to deal with at first. It was just, 'Here's some money, go shop. You're in Italy; buy food and make lunch.' And nobody really wanted to! It's like when you're a kid and your mum says, 'Go and play with my friend's kid, I'm sure you've got lots in common.' But by the end of two hours having done that, you do know each other better. You're going to find out she doesn't like string beans, or whatever. Chatter happens and trust starts to build up. There was a language barrier as well because we were shooting in Italy and it was a bit of an adventure. Then we thought we'd buy some stuff to furnish the flat with so we bought some things for the kitchen and cushions with this very limited budget. I mean, it felt very contrived...but it pays off later when you're on the film set and you are all deep into the moment and really playing family. Just looking up and seeing the fridge magnets that you did buy together helps, very quickly, to give you a bit of history together.

Director Michael Winterbottom on set.

How did people react to you shooting on the streets of Genoa?

They are real people, there are no background actors or anything. But those alleys are very creepy and very dangerous as well. We were abused and threatened. There was this weird, mad bald lady who came out holding her wig, on the wig-stand, so she was carrying this thing around and saying, 'You cannot come here! You cannot bring children here! What do you think you are doing? Get out of here now!' She was clearly not sane. And then you suddenly come out into this burnished, clean piazza in the blazing sun and it all feels safe. And the film reproduces that; we're lost in an alley then suddenly here we are [and it's fine].

There are definite echoes of Don't Look Now, aren't there?

Michael will put his hand up and say he was influenced by that. But I think once you're over the obvious similarities, it's entirely it's own entity. But yes, of course, Venice and Genoa, grief and being lost in alleys! Bergman's films are full of ghosts that you can analyse as to whether they're real or not, or just products of someone's grief. It's closer to that in a way.

Still, grief is something not often dealt with on film...

Well, it's terribly difficult to do. We've got huge taboos around it. It's probably the biggest taboo I can think of in our particular society. I remember when my great grandmother died, when I was about seven, I wanted to go to the funeral but I was kept away because they thought it would upset me. It felt like a big dirty secret... So not only is death something we don't face easily head-on, we also don't know the protocols for dealing with grieving people. It's not very social; people want you to get over it to the point where you can be fun again... With this family, however much they're each suffering, it's very difficult for them to help each other and connect. They're getting on in their different ways...and there's a sort of random shape to the way they deal with things which I think is very real. Just when you think there's going to be an intimate moment where they share something, it turns out to be not quite that. So then you think, actually, it might be about how people can never really share things. But then there's a moment where someone does. So it meanders and I think subverts all your expectations about where it's going. Then there's the ghost of course.

In Hollywood hands, this might've been just another ghost story. It must be satisfying to be part of an industry where filmmakers can make bold decisions.

Yes, I wonder though. I have no idea what the economic crisis is going to do to us all. It's going to be painful, but I wonder if these sorts of low-cost ventures are going to become more common where you don't have vast amounts of money that you have to go to a studio for. It is possible to make films without a lot of paraphernalia. Digital is cheap, you know? We didn't have lights and we only had a crew of about twelve people. You still have to finance it - it doesn't cost nothing - but I wonder if all this means that there's going to be a lot more emphasis on people's independence of thought rather than whatever those calculations are about what the market is demanding. We'll see. People have been doing this sort of thing for years. It's not just because of the economic crisis, but I certainly welcome the sense of independence. And the fact is that Michael did this without any compromise.

Genova is released in UK cinemas on Friday 27th March.Stella Papamichael | Published 26th March 09