Some movies just feel like a warm sweater that’s unraveling at the edges. You know the feeling. You’re watching something beautiful, maybe even a little bit decadent, but there is this persistent, jagged undercurrent of trauma that refuses to go away. That is exactly the vibe of the 2003 film My House in Umbria. It’s been over twenty years since it premiered on HBO, yet it remains one of those rare "quiet" films that people still hunt for on streaming services or dust off on DVD when the world feels a bit too loud.
Honestly, it’s a weird one. On the surface, it looks like a standard "Old British Lady in Italy" travelogue. You’ve got the rolling hills, the sun-drenched villas, and enough wine to drown a village. But the movie, directed by Richard Loncraine and based on the novella by William Trevor, isn’t really about the scenery. It’s about what happens to the human psyche after a bomb goes off—literally and metaphorically.
The Story Most People Forget
Most folks remember Maggie Smith. She’s Mrs. Emily Delahunty, a writer of "romance novels" that are basically high-end trash. She’s eccentric. She’s a bit of a lush. She’s quintessential Maggie Smith before she became the internet’s favorite grandmother in Downton Abbey.
The plot kicks off with a terrorist bombing on a train. It’s sudden. It’s violent. It’s messy. Mrs. Delahunty survives and decides to bring a handful of other survivors back to her villa to recover. This isn't some selfless act of heroism; it’s more like she’s trying to curate a family she never had. She’s lonely.
There’s the "General," played by Ronnie Barker in one of his final roles, an old man who lost his daughter. There's Werner, a young German man who lost his girlfriend and his confidence. And then there's Aimee, a little girl who stopped speaking because the trauma just sucked the words right out of her.
Why the Critics Were Split
If you go back and look at the reviews from 2003, people weren’t sure what to make of it. Some thought it was too sentimental. Others found it haunting.
The complexity comes from Emily herself. She isn't a reliable narrator. She drinks too much Grappa and starts seeing ghosts of her past—specifically her father and the various men who let her down. She’s a survivor of a different kind of explosion: a lifetime of abuse and neglect.
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The movie asks a heavy question: Can you actually heal other people when you're still bleeding?
Chris Cooper plays the "villain" of the piece, though he’s really just a cold, rational American uncle named Thomas Riversmith. He comes to collect Aimee, the silent girl. He’s a bug expert. An entomologist. He looks at life through a microscope, while Emily looks at it through a wine glass. The clash between his rigid logic and her messy, empathetic fantasy world is where the movie really lives. It’s uncomfortable to watch because, in some ways, he’s right. She is unstable. But in other ways, he’s a monster because he doesn't understand that logic can't fix a broken heart.
The William Trevor Connection
You can't talk about My House in Umbria without mentioning William Trevor. He was a master of the short story, a guy who understood the "hidden" lives of people.
The movie deviates from the book in a massive way. In the book, the ending is much darker. It’s more cynical. The film version, written by Hugh Whitemore, softens the edges. It gives us hope. Some purists hate that. They think the "Hollywood-ization" of Trevor’s work ruins the point. But I’d argue that for a movie meant to be consumed in a living room on a Sunday night, the hope is necessary.
Without that glimmer of light, the movie would just be a study in PTSD and alcoholism. Instead, it becomes a study in resilience.
Production Details You Might Have Missed
- The Location: It was filmed in Cinecittà Studios in Rome and on location in Umbria and Tuscany. The villa itself—Il Prato—is almost a character. It feels lived-in, cluttered with Emily's romanticized version of her own life.
- The Music: Claudio Capponi’s score is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s whimsical but has these minor-key shifts that remind you death is just around the corner.
- Awards: Maggie Smith won an Emmy for this. Obviously. She could win an award for reading a grocery list, but here she earns it by showing the cracks in Emily’s armor.
Why It Still Matters Today
We live in a pretty traumatized world. Watching a group of strangers try to form a makeshift family in the wake of a tragedy feels more relevant now than it did in 2003.
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There is a specific scene where they are all sitting in the garden, and for a second, the bombing doesn't matter. The grief doesn't matter. They are just people eating together. It’s a small, fragile moment.
The film doesn't pretend that everything gets fixed. The General is still old. The girl is still orphaned. Emily is still an alcoholic with a traumatic past. But they are together.
That’s the "actionable insight" if you want to call it that. Survival isn't about getting back to who you were before the "bomb" went off. That person is gone. It’s about who you become with the people who were standing next to you when it happened.
How to Actually Watch It
Finding this movie can be a bit of a pain depending on where you live. It’s an HBO film, so it usually lives on Max (formerly HBO Max).
If it’s not there, you’re looking at digital rentals on Amazon or Apple. It’s worth the five bucks. Seriously.
If you're going to watch it, do it right. Don't scroll on your phone. It’s a slow movie. It requires you to pay attention to the way Maggie Smith’s face changes when she thinks no one is looking. It’s in those quiet beats where the actual story is told.
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Moving Forward With This Film
If you’ve already seen it and it stuck with you, there are a few things you should do to deepen the experience.
First, go find the original novella by William Trevor. It’s short. You can read it in an afternoon. Comparing the movie’s warmth to the book’s coldness will give you a whole new perspective on Emily Delahunty. She’s much more manipulative in print, which makes Maggie Smith’s performance even more interesting—she chose to play the vulnerability instead of the guile.
Second, look into Richard Loncraine’s other work. He did the 1995 Richard III with Ian McKellen. You can see the same eye for detail and atmospheric tension there, even though the subject matter is totally different.
Third, if you’re a fan of the "healed by Italy" genre, watch Enchanted April or Room with a View. But keep in mind that My House in Umbria is the darker, slightly drunker cousin of those films. It doesn’t promise that Italy will fix you; it just suggests that Italy is a beautiful place to start picking up the pieces.
Take a moment to appreciate the "small" cinema. In an era of $300 million blockbusters, there is something deeply rebellious about a movie that mostly consists of four people talking in a garden about their regrets. It reminds us that the biggest explosions aren't the ones that happen on train tracks, but the ones that happen inside us when we finally decide to stop running from the past.
Go find a copy. Pour a glass of something strong. Watch it when the house is quiet. You'll see why it hasn't disappeared into the bargain bin of history. It’s too real for that. Even with all the sun and the scenery, it’s a movie that looks you right in the eye and admits that sometimes, life just hurts—and that’s okay as long as you have a few friends and a decent view.