Under the Tuscan Sun

One of those movies whose title instantly reveals everything there is to know about it – in the manner of Volcano, Violent Cop or Parisian Sex Kittens – the tiresome though accidentally amusing Under The Tuscan Sun serves up a typically bland, impeccably picturesque slice of scenic Europudding for those who lapped up such laxative-smooth delights as Malena, Tea With Mussolini and The Talented Mr Ripley.
A bizarre hybrid of interior-décor TV show and sunshine-holiday TV travel-guide, Under The Tuscan Sun at least provides a further career boost to the allegedly 39-year-old Diane Lane, who briefly attained B-list status in the ’80s with appearances in Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, faded completely from the spotlight, recaptured it by taking her kit off for a curiously Oscar-nominated turn in Adrian Lyne’s hilarious bunny-boiler Unfaithful, and now looks set to corner the cinematic market in ageing stray housewives.
The plot is simplicity itself: unfulfilled Yank divorcee Lane, having been dumped by her husband for a younger woman (we’re given to understand that this was some sort of mistake on his part?) hops over to sunny Tuscany for a new lease of life, and finds massive satisfaction and great fulfilment in the form of super-smooth, silver-tongued, tall dark Latin-lover type Raoul Bravo, all the while watching hired hands renovating her luxury Tuscan pad and sneering at their unsophisticated Polish accents. As such, the film not only delivers on the Shirley Valentine escapist-fantasy front, it also panders to the perceived phenomenon of female middle-aged menopausal mania for all manner of home improvements, interior decoration and sunny holidays.
The portrait the film paints of Italy is one hundred per cent in accordance with time-honoured cliché, with endless bottles of red wine being devoured under an apparently permanent sunshine. All the locals seem to have wandered in from a Dolmio advert, and director Audrey Wells has been ill-advised enough to include an excruciating sex scene, in addition to interminable passages of tipsy chick-bonding between Lane and the debauched gaggle of similarly-vintaged harpies she befriends.
While I acknowledge that I am probably not the precise target audience for Under The Tuscan Sun, I can’t imagine too many self-respecting middle-aged women putting up with it either. But hey, the scenery’s lovely.

113 mins. Cert 15pg. Opens April 2