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Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786306010974
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
ISBN: 6306010971
Label: Polygram USA Video
Manufacturer: Polygram USA Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Polygram USA Video
Release Date: October 24, 2000
Running Time: 115 minutes
Sales Rank: 23793
Studio: Polygram USA Video
Theatrical Release Date: May 05, 2000
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Strangely reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Philip Haas's Up at the Villa is a similarly insulated psychosexual drama detached from the larger world yet with consequences well beyond itself. As with Kubrick's final masterpiece, Up at the Villa is constructed around a self-centered character whose insecurities about marriage set a disastrous chain of events into motion. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Mary Panton, a comely Englishwoman staying at a villa in Florence, Italy, in the late 1930s. Sheltered by the goodwill of the British and American community there, Mary--with little money and few prospects for survival outside marriage--dithers over her uncertain destiny and dreams of independence.
Based on a novella by W. Somerset Maugham, Up At the Villa finds Mary forced to take charge of her life after a one-night stand with an Austrian immigrant (Jeremy Davies) leads to tragedy. Sean Penn plays a cavalier American playboy who helps her out in the nightmarish aftermath. Both he and Thomas approach Haas's artful film noir with intentionally mannered performances that blur the line between internal and external experience. The result is a kind of midnight journey through minefields of the subconscious.
Still, the film is not without weaknesses: getting a fix on Penn's roughly sketched character, for instance, proves unsatisfying given his clichéd roguishness. And Haas seems to be plucking derivative ideas from everywhere: there's a strange stretch in the second act in which he goes out of his way to make a Hitchcockian film that really does look and sound like a Hitchcock film. While the result is eerie, you have to wonder why Haas would be so blunt about it. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Good flick...but rent it....
Although I am no fan of Sean Penn, I found UP AT THE VILLA an interesting and well executed story. The protagonist is played by Kirsten Scott-Thomas, who demonstrates again that her strength lies in her ability to play a relatively honest and forthright woman who manages to get into one compromising situation after another involving fornication. Scott-Thomas' character in VILLA seems to have a penchant for becoming involved with the wrong sort of man, and in spite of her comment that she is not ... Read More
Rating: - Way too much spare time
UP AT THE VILLA illustrates the mischief one can get into when burdened with too much spare time.
Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas), a widowed Brit whose husband recently died after squandering their fortune, blast his eyes, is residing in 1939 Florence. Chamberlain has just sold the Czechs down the Vltava, Mussolini is getting uppity, and war appears likely. Panton lives UP AT THE VILLA, the owners of which, friends of Mary's, are away. Mary spends her idle time swanning about with ... Read More
Rating: - Without Kristen Scott Thomas � 2 Stars
If there was ever a need for evidence that one great actor/actress cannot carry a mediocre film, "Up in the Villa" satisfies that need. Kristen Scott Thomas is asked to carry nearly the entire load in this film and she does marvelously; however, the story itself is pedestrian and the essence of stereotyping and cliché.
Set in Italy at the threshold of WW II, the film is the consummate exercise in pigeonholing. The Italian police are corrupt, brazen and supercilious; the European petty ... Read More
Rating: - Sumptuous but slight
A sumptuously filmed, delightfully old-fashioned, but ultimately rather insubstantial adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novella of the same name. Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas) must decide: does she play it safe and marry a stuffy Englishman (James Fox) for position and security, or does she follow her heart and take up with a charming but feckless married American playboy (Sean Penn)? A few days of melodrama involving sex, suicide and the menace of Italian fascism help make up her mind. ... Read More
Rating: - A Mediocre Movie Grows From a Great Book
The cast in this movie is exceptional, and the book is among the author's (W. Somerset Maugham) best, but somehow something got very, very lost in the translation and the movie is merely okay. I don't know why, exactly. It's been said that Maugham is extremely difficult to translate onto the screen, and this movie is Exhibit A. My advice: buy the book and sit back for a great, luxurious read. Skip the movie.
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