Made In Italy (2023)

Real life father and son Liam Neeson and Micheál Richardson play a father and son who finally force themselves to open up and grieve the loss of their wife/mother, who died in a car accident about two decades earlier. In real life, the actors suffered a similar tragedy when Neeson’s wife and Richardson’s mother, Natasha Richardson, died in a skiing accident in 2009. The parallel is inescapable, giving the movie an undercurrent of sorrow, despite the sun-dappled Tuscan scenery and the slightly contrived circumstances. The son is getting divorced and his soon to be ex-wife is aiming to hurt him--she is selling the gallery he manages out from uner him. He decides he is going to buy it, an act of clear desperation, and to raise the cash he convinces his father to sell their jointly owned house in Tuscany--the place where his mother is from. The house is a wreck, and the father is too, not having painted since his wife died and in the course of fixing it up they work on fixing themselves up as well. It is more of a dramedy than a rom com, to be sure, but as light movies watched while traveling go, I would recommend it.