By Tricia Olszewski
If it's possible to give chick flicks a worse name than they already have, the forces behind Under the Tuscan Sun have done it. In adapting Frances Mayes' memoir of post-divorce revitalization in Italy, Tuscan director and screenwriter Audrey Wells has reduced Mayes' whimsy to mere simple-mindedness while running roughshod over such nuisances as narrative and continuity in the service of a higher cultural calling: cuteness. Recovering from trauma was never so adorable.
Tuscan star Diane Lane has traded down from her sordid, Oscar-nominated turn in Unfaithful to the saccharine Frances, a San Francisco critic who gets clued in to her husband's infidelity by an author whose book Frances slammed. When Frances' ex buys her out of their home during divorce proceedings, she leaves behind everything but her library and decamps to a dreary short-term apartment in a building her friends term "Camp Divorce." Worried that Frances is spiraling into depression, her best friend, Patti (Sandra Oh), tries to coax her into taking a tour of Tuscany as tonic—though, because the vacation on offer was originally meant for Patti and her partner, it's a gay tour.
Frances can spend only one more lonesome night listening to a neighboring single's mournful wails before she has to call Patti and ask when the bus leaves. Cut to bus, with the tour leader sunnily announcing, "You are gay and away!" Up to this point, Under the Tuscan Sun has mildly surprised you with its fresh sense of cynicism about life's winding road—squeezing humor from the sad sacks at Camp Divorce and even performing modest self-corrections before its events veer toward Hallmark triteness. When Frances, for example, helps a fellow traveler write a postcard to his mother, we hear her flowery descriptions in voice-over and then watch him read her notes gape-mouthed before he snidely responds, "'The grapes even smell like purple'? My mom will never believe I wrote this!"
Frances takes in a bit of the sights (more tour buses, some abbondanza farmers' markets) before deciding on impulse to buy a dilapidated villa with her settlement—an event that, because of the film's utter lack of contextualization, could very well be occurring on the day she's arrived. After she settles in, Tuscan falls apart—leaning on sunny vistas and stolen glances from local horndogs to affirm Frances' newfound freedom and supposed happiness. Story and character development pop up only sporadically and inevitably yield sentimentality or kookiness: A snap change in season effects Christmas merriment, and Frances' search for contractors introduces a parade of eccentrics and should serve nicely as a pilot for This Old House: Italy.
Lane is lovely as always, and she nearly pulls off making Frances warm and likable. Wells' screenplay, though, never develops the character's relationships past the Harlequin-cover stage. At one point, Frances meets the dreamy Marcello (Raoul Bova) on the street while looking for an antiques shop. She allows him to spirit her away to a distant store, and after about five minutes total of dialogue she gazes into his eyes and invites herself into his bed. Then, a week or so later, Frances literally trips over herself after she spots Marcello driving through her neighborhood, calling out his name and sliding through mud to try to catch up to him like a lovesick teenager. As endearing as Lane can be (and as good as the sex might have been), Frances ultimately descends from vivacity and pathos to plain, ugly desperation.
Shockingly, Tuscan even flops as a travelogue, despite the project's presumed appeal to Italy snobs and middlebrow tourists. Though filmed on location and undeniably sunny, the movie lacks the breathtaking lushness of such similar projects as Enchanted April and Stealing Beauty. Instead of actual scenery, Wells and cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson inexplicably opt to fill the screen with Frances' reactions to it; and though Lane's delicately shifting expressions bespeak her acting skill, they're certainly not going to make anyone brave a flight on Alitalia. By the end of the film, Wells tries to relocate her target demographic by discarding narrative entirely in favor of stock mood-lifters: Kittens! Babies! Thick-accented teens in love! There's a slim chance that Lifetime-channel zealots and Oprah-philes might leave the theater happily hoodwinked; others need not bother entering.