Tonight's Movie: Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

This has been a fun week revisiting a handful of more "recent" titles -- "recent" in the sense that they're from the last couple decades, that is!

I started off with George Clooney in the excellent legal thriller MICHAEL CLAYTON (2007), and then on Major League Baseball's trade deadline day yesterday I rewatched MONEYBALL (2011) for the first time in a dozen years. 

For the record, I liked MONEYBALL more on my second viewing than I did on the first. It's still a little too much of "Brad Pitt driving around talking on the phone" but I appreciated a great deal about it, including a very young Chris Pratt as first baseman Scott Hatteberg.

Today I pulled out UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN (2003) which I'd not seen since close to its initial release date a couple decades ago, shortly before the start of this blog.

UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN is loosely based on the memoir of the same name by Frances Mayes. Diane Lane, always a favorite, plays Frances, a writer and professor whose life is knocked off course when she discovers her husband is having an affair.

During a trip to Tuscany Frances impulsively leaves her tour group and even more impulsively buys a 300-year-old villa. The house has many "issues" but is beautiful, and embracing a new life just might help shake Frances out of the funk she's been in since her divorce.

Frances sets out to make the house habitable with a group of local workers, and as she gets to know the men and embraces cooking for them she begins to feel she's part of the community.

An affair with handsome Marcello (Raoul Bova) hits a dead end, but there is also much happiness in Frances's life, including the birth of a friend's baby and helping a young couple she's become friendly with get married. And you never know what the future will hold...

UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN is for the most part a beautiful and uplifting film. I don't care for the overly frank depiction of the affair, which strikes me as a little "much" for a PG-13 movie, but I love so much else about the film and its depiction of Frances and her "found family." There's a scene where Frances sits at her desk with a kitten in view which is positively idyllic.

Lane is a charmer, as always, and sympathetic as she moves through various life changes. It's not always easy for Frances to surmount the challenges she faces, but she gets up again the next day and keeps on going.

I did have a practical question or two: How does Frances support herself without any obvious job? Did the proceeds from selling her home in the divorce really stretch that far? Was she making money from writing not shown on camera? And what about things like a visa, did buying a home qualify her to remain in the country permanently?

This movies runs 113 minutes. It was directed by Audrey Wells, who sadly passed away in 2018. It was filmed by Geoffrey Simpson and scored by Christophe Beck.

I watched UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN via a widescreen DVD.

Previous reviews of Diane Lane films: A LITTLE ROMANCE (1979), INSIDE OUT (2015), PARIS CAN WAIT (2019).

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