Under the Tuscan Sun
First screened in October 2003 / Most recently screened and reviewed in July 2025
Director: Audrey Wells. Cast: Diane Lane, Sandra Oh, Vincent Riotta, Lindsay Duncan, Raoul Bova, Massimo Sarchielli, Giulia Steigerwalt, Sasa Vulicevic, Pawel Szajda, Valentine Pelka, Roberto Nobile, Kate Walsh, Jeffrey Tambor, David Sutcliffe, Elden Henson, Don McManus, Jack Kehler, Dan Bucatinsky, Kristoffer Ryan Winters. Screenplay: Audrey Wells (based on the book by Frances Mayes and a screen story by Audrey Wells). Twitter Capsule:
Quite a loose adaptation, I gather. Moneyed fantasy makes pain harder to relate to but I had fun watching it.
VOR:②
I have a soft spot for this stuff and the execution is solid across departments. Still no reason to run. Rent Guinevere instead?
The first time I saw this, I had to dip out from the end credits because I was hustling into a matinée of Kill Bill on the adjacent screen. This was maybe my nuttiest-ever double feature, absolutely watched in the right order. I don't think Diane Lane's Frances was exactly in the market for a katana, but if she had one, that cheating shit-for-brains husband we never meet in Under the Tuscan Sun had better have slept with one eye open.
As for the movie: Tuscan Sun is no masterpiece, but having assumed I remembered it more fondly than it deserved, I was happy to discover the opposite. For all the movie's tolerance for cliché and for the subplot or two we just don't need (the star-crossed lovers, the delusional English expat), I'm impressed at writer-director Audrey Wells's willingness to let Frances's fitful, forward and backward, gentle but rough, day-by-day growth after heartbreak be the whole plot. Few big Speeches. Memorably sketched supporting characters who don't compete for attention. A plausible and often nuanced sense of emotional texture, weather, and rhythm. Plot contrivances and financial privilege make Frances's exact experience remote from most of ours, but she's still possible to relate to because Wells and Lane conspire to give her some life and dimension, well beyond her post-marital predicament. She's the woman who got left in a movie about sadness and rebound, but she's appreciably more than that, and/or she contains a lot of other stories within that story.
The movie also benefits from Geoffrey Simpson's lighting and even more from the expert costume and hair/makeup teams, not just because they make Lane look so disarmingly gorgeous but because they are absolutely instrumental in charting some of the wordless eddies and inflections of Frances's inward and outward life as both are changing—not always in sync, and not always in steady directions. Tuscan Sun has a good, steady vibe, even when Frances isn't steady, or the plotting isn't; it's less location-porny than it might have been; it easily survives its faker or sillier moments; it admires and respects its heroine without yassifying her into total unreality; and both the first scene and final shot are real keepers. How many mall movies this year, in any genre, can you say that about? Tuscan villas are nice, but I'm perfectly happy with a warm, elegant, not-too-pushy remodel of an old, reliable format. Grade:B–
