Director: Audrey Wells
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Rating: C+
"I'll hire the muscular descendants of Roman gods to do the heavy lifting."
Writer Frances Mayes (Lane) has had her seemingly perfect life shattered; following the discovery that her husband is cheating on her she goes through a quick divorce and emerges depressed and unable to write. Enter her newly pregnant lesbian best friend, Patti (Oh), and Patti's partner, Grace (Kate Walsh), who decide to sent Frances on a gay tour of Tuscany. There her tour group stops in the small town of Cortona where, after a meeting with eccentric British actress Katherine (Duncan) Frances decides to buy a dilapidated villa. The film then focuses on the restoration of the villa, with the help of a crew of Polish immigrants, and Frances' attempts to pull her life together and once again find love and happiness.
This is one of those movies that has a lot wrong with it, but is still fun and enjoyable. I think it's the type of movie that critics like to be hard on because of all the cliches and simplicity behind it. It is in its very essence a chick flick and thus to a degree that makes it bad. At the same time, however, it's a well done chick flick and that in my mind makes it good. There's a lot of comedy to it, and a fair bit of romance. Lane does a lot of chick flicks and she does them pretty well. They might not become classics or must-see-films, but they're definitely the ones that you go to when you want a good cry or that uplifting feeling that you can get from a romance.
What I really like about Under the Tuscan Sun, however, isn't the romance in itself. It's the lack of romance that makes this movie so good. Frances is not learning to love life again because she falls in love, she's not finding her muse and happiness in another man. She's finding it in life around her as a whole, and really realizing that there's more to life than just love - there's more to happiness than being with someone. There's a point early on in the film where Frances makes a wish about the things that she would like to see happen in the house, and the ways in which they come true without being what Frances had thought. The movie is a bit of a rarity for a chick flick largely in that it isn't about the chick getting the guy. Maybe not the best film, but I definitely enjoyed it.
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