Product: Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
Rating: 3.0
Luminous Lane, Beautiful Scenery...But Then What?
It's good to see Diane Lane enjoy a career renaissance after such a promising start nearly a quarter-century ago in George Roy Hill's "A Little Romance", as a prepubescent American falling in love with a Parisian boy, who whisks her away to Venice under the knowing eye of Laurence Olivier. Ironically, in this most recent movie, she plays an American woman, again in Italy, but this time escaping a broken marriage to find fulfillment in a Tuscan villa she decides to buy on the spot and renovate. Leave it to Lane to make it all look reasonable as what was precocious in the earlier movie has matured into a lovely sense of self-awareness and gravity in this film. And her beauty has become even more striking over the years. She has also become accomplished in displaying several emotions concurrently, layering her characters with a complexity of feelings so that you can never quite predict what she is thinking and what she will do next. Her post-coital train ride in Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful" is a great example of this hard-earned skill. And Lane needs this skill in spades as she plays a fictionalized version of Frances Mayes, the author of the book upon which this greatly altered movie is based. The character seems to be longing for something she never quite figures out, and the actress convincingly portrays this sense of want. In fact, Lane almost saves this movie but not quite.At heart, this is a patronizing romantic fantasy that feels like it was produced in another era entirely, somewhere in the mid-fifties when Lane's character would be labeled a brazen, put-upon woman tainted by divorce. I kept expecting Rosanno Brazzi to come out and say something ridiculously continental to sweep her off her feet. Instead, we get Raoul Bava, who delivers the smoldering good looks but none of the irony of his rather trite Italian lover role. Lending even more color to the soap opera atmosphere is a gallery of eccentrics with an array of international accents who serve up allegorical fables and Hallmark-card advice to the heroine - an empathetic real estate agent who seems to have a crush on Frances (a flirtation I wish the director could have explored more); the young lovers who must deal predictably with the disapproval of the girl's strict parents; the rest of the inept but dedicated renovation crew; the English free-spirit who worked with Fellini and seems to have kept up her "la dolce vita" character in real life; the pregnant lesbian friend abandoned by her lover. Intentionally or not, Frances seems to help set all their lives on the right path, as the picturesquely run-down old villa gradually turns into the home of her dreams and serves as a life-affirming metaphor. So many contrivances riddle the story, especially toward the end when plot threads get tied up quickly. Frances' fate is not all that satisfying to the viewer either, and you know your plot is undercooked when a minor character is introduced in the last few minutes to provide romantic salvation. In truth, I am not sure how much better this movie could have been given the base material, as the story is nothing deeper than the Harlequin romance novels you find in the checkout line at Safeway. It just seems like there are lots of personal problems floating around the plot, but I have to give credit to Lane and director Audrey Wells who jointly make the film anything but sad. Add to that the travelogue aspect with the lovely cinematography by Geoffrey Simpson of Italy's beautiful landscapes, and you can think of worse ways to spend two hours. And watch it for the true coming-of-age of Diane Lane, radiant, gifted and far more deserving of material better than this.