Some movies are predictable in such a skilled, canny, effective way that any more inspiration in the storytelling would spoil the fun. Writer-director Audrey Wells’ Under the Tuscan Sun emerges as a shrewdly formulaic, femme crowd-pleaser, complete with snappy dialogue, an intoxicating setting and a rich, utterly captivating central performance from Diane Lane.
In adapting Frances Mayes’ titular bestseller, which was basically an exhaustively detailed, nonfiction travelogue, Wells has concocted a storyline from scratch. As embodied by Lane, the Mayes character is a writer, book critic and literature professor who falls apart when she learns (from a writer she critiqued unsparingly) that her husband has been cheating on her. The divorce settlement puts Frances in an awkward position: in order to avoid alimony payments, she must sell her house to her ex-husband and his new bride.
Just as Frances hits rock bottom which means, in her case, moving into one of those depressing temporary apartment buildings for people whose finances have been frozen by continuing divorce proceedings her best friend Patty (Sandra Oh) reveals that she’s pregnant, which means that she and her partner can no longer attend a gay couples’ tour of Tuscany. Frances takes the ticket instead and the Italian idyll awakens her senses as a writer. When she sees that an old villa is for sale, she impulsively buys it, ditching her old life in San Francisco and starting anew.
Frances’ clean slate, however, includes a centuries-old money-pit of a house, linguistic and cultural barriers and paralyzing fits of loneliness. The obligatory assortment of colorful locals helps her overcome all of it.
Under the Tuscan Sun pulls no punches as a feel-good, wish-fulfillment movie. Its ideas and plot complications are well worn, but the movie presents them skillfully. Frances eventually meets the man she thinks she’s been looking for, a soulful-eyed bartender named Marcello (Gap ad fixture Raoul Bova). Their interaction begins with a typical movie meet-cute but eventually grows convincingly complicated, studded with relationship land mines that feel authentic (physical distance, obligations to friends, the fact that one person’s romantic saving grace can be another’s booty call).
All the contrivance works because Wells is a smart filmmaker with a flair for imbuing predictable storylines with emotional truth. Her script for The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996) made that film one of the three or four genuinely smart, big-studio romantic comedies of the last decade. Under the Tuscan Sun marks Wells’ second turn in the director’s chair, following 1999’s Guinevere, a May-December romantic drama with tough performances by Stephen Rea and Sarah Polley and an honest eye for its own characters.
In this film, when the Italian heartthrob Marcello makes Frances melt with a gooey pickup line, she relents, but then defensively comments,’That’s exactly the kind of thing American women expect Italian men to say to them.’ It’s a prickly moment that rings true, particularly when Bova’s face falls in disappointment. Moments later, the line pays off hilariously with a comically honest comeback.
In Diane Lane, Under the Tuscan Sun finds its ideal dose of star wattage. Lane, who has spent too much of her 25-year film career disappearing into stock wife-and-sidekick roles, proves once again that she absolutely shines when she’s at the center of a film, just as she did in My New Gun, A Walk on the Moon and Unfaithful. Never mind that she may be today’s most beautiful American film actress Lane’s performance is so rigorous and fully felt that the audience can’t help but get caught up in Frances’ gradual emotional recovery.
Lane doesn’t just anchor Under the Tuscan Sun she knocks the movie out of the park. Midway through the film, she has a scene in which Frances, having just returned home after a night with Marcello, reacts with private ecstasy at having finally gotten laid for the first time since her divorce. It’s an exuberant moment and a nifty counterpoint to the much-celebrated post-tryst train scene in Unfaithful that won the actress so much deserved acclaim.
The film features other scene-stealing performances, cast with an eye toward quality rather than trendiness. Oh, whose acerbic delivery was always the only bearable thing about the inexplicably long-running HBO sitcom ‘Arliss,’ scores the biggest laughs as the witty gal-pal. Lindsay Duncan, the acclaimed stage actress, also has her share of choice moments as a decadent British expat who claims to have once been the youthful girlfriend of Fellini (a plot point that leads to a graceful La Dolce Vita homage late in the film).
The script introduces a whole truckload of kindly Tuscan locals, and they’re mostly charming, although I could have done without the lengthy forbidden-young-love subplot between the Polish laborer (Pawel Szadja) and the virginal Italian girl (Giulia Steigerwalt). After all, this is that rarest of Hollywood creations: a fresh, unapologetic mature woman’s story. Why spoil it with teen romance?
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