Frances is a Professor of Literature at a university in San Francisco who finds out her writer husband has been cheating on her. After a rather traumatic divorce and a descent into loneliness and despair she finally agrees to take the trip to Tuscany offered to her by her two lesbian friends. She decides on a whim one day while on the bus tour of Tuscany to buy a villa and restart her life.

We follow her trials and tribulations as she renovates the house with the assistance of a local builder who relies on three Polish immigrant workers to get the job done. She eventually stumbles into a love affair with Marcello a part owner of a bar on the Amalfi Coast and she rekindles her capacity for love. Everything goes fabulously well until circumstances make it increasingly difficult for the two to see each other regularly. One of the complicating factors is the arrival of one of the friends who offered her the trip, now heavily pregnant but abandoned by her lover. The birth of the child is a key moment as it brings a sense of family to the villa for the first time and helps Frances live out her dream, although not in quite the way she had originally intended.

With one of the Polish workers falling in love with the daughter of his boss it isn?t long before we have a wedding at the villa to fulfil another of Frances? wishes, although again she is no the prime player in the dream. Finally she meets a man and settles down to enjoy the wholesome life in the vial with family, children and friends close at hand.

The idea of finding yourself in an apparently alien environment is a fairly simple idea for a film and the story line is pretty much as would be expected. The film is touted on other DVD review sites (I look to see if they agree with my view) as a ?chick flick? and a perfect medium for Lane to parade her wares. Being male I can agree that the movie is probably going to be viewed more positively by females but I don?t think it necessarily makes it, even as a chick flick. My wife wasn’t impressed either.

I found Lane to be incredibly infuriating as she spent just about every scene screwing her face into a variety of contortions, attempting to portray a host of emotions. I thought her performance was distracting and by the end I was sick of the facial gymnastics she performed. The rest of the cast are an adequate bunch and none could aspire to any great acting heights in my humble opinion. I got the movie because I had been to Tuscany and I did recognise some of the sights. Apart from that I thought it was a bit of a waste of time and I never felt any great sympathy for Frances or her plight.

THE EXTRAS

You can click on Tuscany 101 and hear both Diane Lane and writer/producer/director Audrey Wells discuss the movie and the role of Frances. Some of the sound in this section is pretty good too. There?s also deleted scenes and the ability to set an audio commentary over the film.

CONCLUSION

Frances is a divorced American Professor of Literature who decides on a whim to buy a house in Tuscany while there on a tour. She proceeds to renovate the house and her wishes for love, a family and a wedding for the house are all granted although not quite in the way she first thought.