Rory's Way / The Etruscan Smile (2018 Oded Binnun, Mihal Brezis)

Um... Oded is I think Israeli and made Oscar-nominated short Aya... and ditto to Mihal (who went to the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School - how awful is that - do you think sleeping with your young stars is one of the courses they teach?)

The screenplay is by Michael McGowan, Michal Lali Kagan and Sarah Bellwood, with additional material by Shuki Ben-Naim and Amital Stern; from the 1985 novel 'La Sonrisa Etrusca' by Spanish novelist Jose Luis Sampedro, originally set in Italy.

Blimey.

Anyway, there are one or two slight lapses into a sort of Hollywood sentimentality, but otherwise this is an engaging and entertaining film with Brian Cox as a fish out of water in San Francisco, staying with his son JJ Feild and daughter-in-law Thora Birch and falling both for their infant son and Rosanna Arquette before dying.

With Peter Coyote (language professor), Treat Williams (father-in-law), Tim Matheson (doctor).

Photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe with a particularly beautiful shot of Cox in water as San Francisco lights bounce off it.

Rosanna Arquette turned 60 this year. It seems unthinkable.