Product: Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
Rating: 3.0
"Never lose your childish enthusiasm, and everything will come your way."
(3.5 stars) Based on the captivating memoir of author Frances Mayes, this fictionalized version of her story becomes a completely different creation--far more romantic, more predictable, and more obvious than the memoir. Here in the film, Frances, recovering from a devastating divorce, accepts a ten-day trip to Tuscany from two friends, leaves the tour group, and discovers and buys an abandoned villa. With her own imagination and the help of an inexperienced Polish crew, which has the predictable number of construction disasters, she renovates the old villa, always hoping that some day there will be a wedding, preferably her own to the perfect man, and a family to give life to the old place.The scenery is beautiful (of course), the vistas are endless and well-photographed, and the challenges of making the old house both livable and comfortable are never-ending. Walls falling down, a violent thunderstorm, a visiting owl, and unlimited problems with the plumbing keep the humor visual and the viewer amused. Frances's affair and the unexpected arrival of a pregnant friend from home add intrigue and keep the complications coming. A secondary Romeo-and-Juliet plot involving the teenaged daughter of one of her neighbors and the Polish teenager working on Frances's house, add "depth" to Frances's own search for romantic happiness. Ultimately, the film ends as the viewer expects it will--romantically satisfying.The subtlety of the book, with its lovely descriptions of the countryside and its people and its sense of reality, are sacrificed here in favor of visual excitement, humor, and ongoing love stories, and Frances's (real) self-discovery becomes trite moralizing in the film, as seen in the quotation that begins this review. Diane Lane is charming as Frances, but she, nevertheless, looks older than the young men to whom she seems to be attracted, and the gay subplot involving her friends and the tour which brings her to Tuscany are extraneous (but politically correct). Highly romantic and fun to watch, this film is a disappointingly Hollywood-ized version of a thoughtful and charming memoir. n Mary Whipple