Product: Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
Rating: 1.0
Chick finds sex in Italy
I knew the movie had little to do with the book of the same name, which would have been fine but I could tell that it wasn't just the facts they'd changed for the movie but the whole feel. The book didn't turn Italy and her men into stereotypes of hunky, swarthy men. But the movie managed to do that and more, turning every character we came across into a stereotype. Here's a bus filled with gays laughing and being inclusive and friendly, even to the straight girl. Here's a lesbian couple, blissful in their coming parenthood. Here's the pregnant friend now abandoned by aforementioned gay lover who, in what looks like her 10th month of pregnancy, jumps on a plane to show up unannounced at her buddy's Italian villa to have her baby. And live there, as far as we can tell. Here's the beautiful, eccentric actress from a by-gone day spewing out sexual advice while lunching with a group of nuns -- and dressed a bit like a padre? Why not! She's eccentric, don't you know. Missing was the nuts and bolts of how all this happens. How's Frances Mayes (Lane) supporting herself? Where's the money coming from? In the book, Mayes and her lover spent summer's in Italy working the house and land back to life, then running back to SF to teach so they could make more money to do the whole thing again next summer vacation. And the book has a final scene that left me gasping with surprise and delight which the movie was in no way going to recreate, not with Lane's Mayes sniffing out yet another lover in the movie's last scene. Was that all the movie could aspire to, that Diane Lane find another lover? Talk about shallow.I'm not so rigid to believe that a movie based on even a favorite book must be loyal to that book. But with any changes, you'd expect the movie to be good in its own way. I'm not sure why this movie bothered calling attention to its connection to Mayes' book. Why not just call it "Chick finds sex in Italy" and leave it at that?