director/screenwriter
Audrey Wells
based on
the book by
Frances Mayes
producers
Tom Sternberg
Audrey Wells
cinematographer
Geoffrey Simpson
music
Christophe Beck
editor
Arthur Coburn
cast
Diane Lane (Frances)
Sandra Oh (Patti)
Lindsay Duncan (Katherine)
Raoul Bova (Marcello)
Vincent Riotta (Martini)
Mario Monicelli (Old Man with Flowers)
Roberto Nobile (Placido)
Anita Zagaria (Fiorella)
Evelina Gori (Nona Cardinale)
Giulia Steigerwalt (Chiara)
Pawel Szadja (Pawel)
Valentine Pelka (Jerzy)
Sasa Vulicevic (Zbignew)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 113m
u.s.
release: September
26, 2003
video
availability: TBA
official
website
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Charlie Kaufman must be burning
with envy of Audrey Wells, who in Under the Tuscan Sun
has achieved what Kaufman tried to do with The Orchid Thief
(i.e., turn a highly readable but unfilmable book into a movie
-- Kaufman ended up writing a movie
about not being able to write the movie). Wells has taken Frances
Mayes' nonfiction bestseller and cheerfully fictionalized it,
keeping only the basic idea (woman oversees the reconstruction
of an Italian villa) and the title. Fans of the book might not
be pleased with the results, though the movie is charming enough
to lure non-readers to Mayes' far different narrative -- as long
as they're not expecting a tale of a divorcee, her Italian lover,
and her sarcastic pregnant lesbian friend.
Fans of Diane Lane, on the
other hand, should be happy with what amounts to a glowing vehicle
for her. She plays Frances as a somewhat bewildered, overwhelmed
woman who doesn't mind being overwhelmed sometimes. When she
first enters what will become her villa in Tuscany and a flock
of pigeons flap loudly across her path, she is startled into
laughter, not fear. Life has thrown Frances a curveball -- her
husband has dumped her for another woman -- and when given the
opportunity to take a free tour of Tuscany (courtesy of gay friend
Patti, played with considerable wit by Sandra Oh), she almost
passes it up. But she eventually gives in, and falls in love
with a villa she hasn't even seen from the inside yet. As she
puts it, "I can't go back to San Francisco." She'd
rather take on a Tuscan money pit in a place where she doesn't
know anyone (or the language) than go back "home" in
defeat.
So the story, as reconceived
by Wells, becomes about how Frances repairs herself as well as
the villa. She does eventually make friends who pull her out
of herself, including the free-spirited Katherine (Lindsay Duncan),
who says she was once cast in a Fellini film as a little girl.
Not by accident does the movie evoke Fellini and not, say, Antonioni
(heck, Frances' life back in Frisco would've been the Antonioni
film). Tuscany is romanticized as a simpler, magical place where
a splatter of bird poop on one's head is taken as a good sign.
It's all very fluffy, but this is good-hearted and great-looking
fluff, photographed on location (by Geoffrey Simpson) to bring
out Tuscany's ancient beguiling wonders.
There's a love story, of course.
Frances falls for the hunky Marcello (Raoul Bova); he's married,
but then so was her husband, and Frances may go into the affair
as much out of spite towards her ex as out of passion. She doesn't
recognize, naturally, that she has become the "other woman"
who once stole her own husband away; as in Unfaithful,
Lane shows us all the goofy and hot-blooded emotions involved
in sex, though I hope she doesn't become typecast as Woman Who
Has Flings Against Her Better Judgment. In any event, the way
Lane plays these affairs, we may doubt her judgment but we never
begrudge it. The giddy little dance she does after her first
sacktime with Marcello proves her innate ability to win our empathy;
here's hoping she never uses this power for evil.
Under the Tuscan Sun is of the "everyone goes home
happy" school of romantic comedies. That's what it's built
to do, and Audrey Wells, who has shown a taste for more dramatic
work (Guinevere, her only previous directorial outing,
from 1999) as well as lighter fare (such as The
Truth About Cats and Dogs and the upcoming Shall We
Dance?), does what she sets out to do. She remains one of
the better dialogue carpenters in the business, too; an early
scene with Jeffrey Tambor as Frances' attorney vibrates with
what isn't said, and we are grateful to Wells for having faith
in our intelligence -- we figure things out along with Frances.
That's also true of the final shot, which sums up the whole restoration
theme of the movie without calling undue attention to itself.
Under the Tuscan Sun will please people who aren't ordinarily
pleased at the movies these days -- older folks uninterested
in gun-toting vampires or wrestlers moonlighting as actors --
and it earns their pleasure.
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