Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

A writer impulsively buys a villa in Tuscany in order to change her life.

Director: Audrey Wells

Writers: Frances Mayes (book), Audrey Wells (screen story) |1 more credit »

Stars: Diane Lane, Raoul Bova, Sandra Oh

Frances Mayes (Diane Lane) is a San Francisco writer whose seemingly perfect life takes an unexpected turn when she learns that her husband has been cheating on her. The divorce—and the loss of her house to her ex-husband and his much-younger, pregnant new partner—leaves her depressed and unable to write. Her best friend Patti (Sandra Oh), a lesbian who is expecting a child, is beginning to think Frances might never recover. She urges Frances to take an Italian vacation to Tuscany using the ticket she purchased before she became pregnant. At first Frances refuses, but after another depressing day in her gloomy apartment, she decides that it's a good idea to get away for a while.

In Tuscany, her tour group stops in the small town of Cortona. After wandering through the charming streets, she notices a posting for a villa for sale in Cortona. She rejoins her tour group on the bus, and just outside town, the bus stops to allow a flock of sheep to cross the road. While they wait, Frances realizes that they've stopped directly in front of the very villa that she had seen for sale—something she believes is a sign. She asks the driver to stop and she gets off the bus. Through a series of serendipitous events, she becomes the owner of a lovely yet dilapidated villa in beautiful Tuscany.

Frances begins her new life with the help of a variety of interesting characters and unusual but gentle souls. She hires a crew of Polish immigrants to renovate the house. Over time, Frances also befriends her Italian neighbors and develops relationships with her Polish workers, the realtor who sold her the villa, and Katherine (Lindsay Duncan), an eccentric aging British actress who evokes the mystery and beauty of an Italian film star. Later, she is visited by the now very pregnant Patti, whose partner Grace has left her.

Frances meets and has a brief romantic affair with Marcello (Raoul Bova), but their relationship does not last. She is about to give up on happiness when one of her Polish workers, a teenager named Pawel (Pawel Szajda), and a neighbor's young daughter come to her for help. Her father does not approve of him, due to his being Polish and not having a family, yet they are very much in love and want to get married. Frances persuades the girl's family to support their love, by proclaiming that she is Pawel's family, and the young lovers are soon married at the villa. During the wedding celebration, Frances meets an American writer who is traveling in Tuscany, and their attraction for each other points to a romantic future.

Diane Lane stars in this gorgeous-looking romance as an emotionally bruised American divorcee who decides to rebuild her life in picture perfect Tuscany. Having fallen in love with the Italian countryside, she finds much more to fall in love with after buying a dilapidated villa on a whim. Based on the novel by Frances Mayes.

An impulse buy while on holiday in Italy is normally confined to a wooden Pinnochio puppet, a Chianti bottle wrapped in raffia or a bottle of olive oil.

Newly-divorced American literary professor Frances Mayes (Lane) goes one further - she buys a villa after fleetingly glancing at the property from a tourist bus.

Shell-shocked from her marriage split, speaking no Italian and unsure why she made the rash purchase in the first place, it looks like a big mistake.

But by slowly getting to know her neighbours and embarking on a restoration scheme with a gang of comedy Polish labourers, she rediscovers the pleasures of life.

Loosely based on the best-selling novel by the real-life Frances Mayes, this is dollops of sentimentality served like ladles of Italian ice cream.

It's a shamelessly romanticised world of gelato-guzzling nuns, honey-coloured stone churches in poppy fields and bambinos clustering around red Ferraris.

Lane herself seems to making a pitch for Meg Ryan's rom-com mantle, which means pouting winsomely and giggling through life's adversities.

Even before leaving San Francisco, the stereotypes are present and correct with Frances' best buddy an Asian lesbian single-mum model of political correctness.

In Italy, it doesn't get much better with sleek romeos seemingly tumbling out of Cornetto commercials to give Frances the eye.

Estate agent Signor Martini (Vincent Riotta) would like to live up to his name and take a tumble with Frances anytime, any place anywhere - if he wasn't married with two kids.

Duncan lives la dolce vita as the sort of free-spirited British vamp delighting the locals but whose fingers you'd like to ram into a pasta machine.

Even the most Barbara Cartland fixated cinama-goer - who this is presumably pitched at - would find the romantic idyll difficult to swallow. Tuscany looks nice, though.