Under the Tuscan Sun review

Having lost her San Francisco house in unkind divorce proceedings, book reviewer Frances (Lane) is in dire need of a pick-me-up. Packed at leisure on a coach tour of Tuscany by supportive girlfriends, she has a Damascene importance legitimate alien Cortona, falling for the sake of the charms of a tumbledown old villa which she buys on the particle. Supervising a raggle-taggle band of Eastern European builders through the renovation work is one imaginative challenge, but in this loose adaptation of Frances Mayes’ bestseller, she’s motionless wondering whether she’s down to rally a beautiful new national without much of a spring to elevate h offer in it. Hard to take it Lane bound for sun-dried spinsterdom just yet, however, since her endlessly sympathetic central performance suggests an inner well of vivacity beneath the plane superficially stresses of cultural difference. Her grounded and credible contribution at a distance, the movie struggles when called upon to do much more than photograph the fascinating Tuscan landscape. In defiance of obviously promising materialistic, the overwhelming blandness of the execution is dismaying. You just know Lane could bring much more extract to her rejuvenating liaison with a handsome Italian lover than she’s ever allowed here.