"My House in Umbria" (2003) by Richard Loncraine.

Last night I watched truly beautiful movie.
It was something I bought on DVD during my last year's visit to London, an impulse purchase but intuition told me this might be something I would like - I love drama with eccentric characters and good acting, so name of Maggie Smith was in itself strong recommendation. It turned out "My House in Umbria" was exactly the type of feel-good movies I love.

Made from a novel by Irish writer William Trevor (whom I need to check out) "My House in Umbria" is about a group of train passengers who survive bomb attack.None of these people knew each other from before and as they recover in Italian hospital, gentle eccentric romance novel writer Emily Delahunty (Maggie Smith) decides to take this little bruised group in her Umbria house - she lives alone in a beautiful country side house and loves the idea that perhaps nature and silence would heal the wounds of this unexplained, brutal attack. Her naturally strong imagination is inspired by these new friends and who they might have been before they boarded the train. There is an old general (Ronnie Barker), German journalist (Benno Fürmann) and a little American girl (Emmy Clarke), all of them lost people who travelled with them - the little girl is in fact mute now from a shock of losing her parents.

The cast is excellent but it is Maggie Smith who stands head and shoulders above everybody else as her character (sweet, lonely soul tormented by memories) tries to help people who only yesterday were strangers on a train and suddenly had turned into friends connected with survival. Smith is very much like Blanche du Bois in a sense that she refuses to see bad things in life and focus only on positive. Her own life was all but romantic as we slowly find out, nevertheless she writes love stories with happy endings and creates her own reality, believes in dreams and astrology - the character of Thomas Riversmith (Chris Cooper) is her direct opposite as American scientist who has different outlook at life, laughs at her little eccentrics and in general has no patience for people like her. As Mrs.Delahunty slowly finds more about her guests, we also find more about them and about her - all of them in their way help to each other but its Italian countryside that truly heals everybody. What a beautiful, beautiful movie.