Under The Tuscan Sun (2003)
comedy drama
directed by : Audrey Wells
featuring : Diane Lane - Sandra Oh - Lindsay Duncan - Raoul Bova - Vincent Riotta
running time : 1 hour 53 minutes
A woman starts her life over with a new home in a new land in this romantic comedy drama . Frances (Diane Lane) is a writer in her mid-'30s who feels emotionally derailed after her divorce. Unhappy and unable to write, she isn't sure what to do with her life, and her best friend Patti (Sandra Oh) decides she needs some time away from her problems. With that in mind, Patti gives Frances a ticket for a two-week tour of the Tuscany region of Italy; while there, Frances finds a dilapidated old villa. Charmed by the warmth, beauty, and charm of the small town of Cortona, Frances impulsively decides to buy the villa, thinking she can fix it up herself. The home proves to be more of a handyman's special than she imagined, but as she slowly gets the hang of household maintenance, Italian style, Frances develops a new confidence as she makes friends with her neighbors and finds love with a handsome local named Marcello (Raoul Bova). Under The Tuscan Sun is loosely adapted from the memoir by Frances Mayes, who (unlike the leading character of the film) remained happily married during her sojourn in Tuscany.

This overall thrust of this chick flick doesn't stray far from formula, but the filmmakers fill Under The Tuscan Sun with enough smart casting and unorthodox flourishes to keep things interesting far longer than they might have. Hollywood vet and Oscar nominee lane has earned the right to rest on her laurels; for her, that means letting her innate charm and screen charisma do most of the work and summoning up the odd moment of actual acting chops only on the rare occasion in which the script requires it. In smaller roles, Oh and Lindsay Duncan get to have lots more fun, Oh as a snarky lesbian sidekick and Duncan as an eccentric, over-50 actress with the appetite of a woman half her age. As far as the plot goes, the elliptical happy ending is implicit in the premise, but writer/director Audrey Wells makes sure her characters earn it even if that means the third act drags on into a fourth one. Luckily, cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson makes the most of every gorgeous moment even when the story begins to sag. A well-crafted, picturesque romantic comedy isn't exactly a hard sell in Hollywood, but Under The Tuscan Sun surpasses the genre's requirements more often than it settles for them.