Story

In Unfaithful, Diane Lane cheated on Richard Gere with French stud Olivier Martinez. Now Lane's the victim of an extramarital affair in this heavily fictionalized and romanticized rendering of writer Frances Mayes' 1996 memoir of her Tuscany travels. Novelist and book critic Frances Mayes (Lane) is so consumed with her work that she's completely oblivious to her husband's extramarital dalliances. She only finds out when an aspiring writer breaks the bad news to her as revenge for panning his novel. The subsequent divorce hits Frances so hard that her pregnant gay pal Patti (Sandra Oh) packs off her to Italy for a tour of Tuscany. Blinded by the region's beauty, Frances makes a spontaneous decision to buy a villa in the town of Cortona. It's a good thing Frances loves terrible ideas. The villa is a money pit, so she hires a ragtag bunch of builder to knock the place back into shape. But as the villa regains its incandescence, Frances realizes that she has bought a huge home for a life she does not have. She has no family, her friends are back home in San Francisco, and her love life is nonexistent. She's fond of realtor Signor Martini (Vincent Riotta), but he's very married and very faithful. Then, while running an errand in Rome, she bumps into handsome antiques dealer Marcello (Raoul Bova). He seems like a smooth operator at first, but his intentions turn out to be purely honorable. Frances is so beguiled that she drags Marcello into bed. Can one night of passion produce a lifetime of love? That's the challenge Frances strives to meet. But Under the Tuscan Sun isn't concerned with defining a woman solely by her martial status. Writer/director Audrey Wells hammers homes the message that good can come out of the pain and suffering caused by the end of a marriage. There's nothing particularly radical about this notion, so Wells instead sets out to spur the brokenhearted into reclaiming their lives. With wit, sensitivity but little imagination, Wells shows that Tuscany isn't so much a place but a state of mind achievable through risk and perseverance.

Acting

Unfaithful's triumph as a treatise on adultery hinged solely on Diane Lane's willingness to challenge herself beyond the point of her physical and emotional limits. She was surprisingly brave and truthful in an otherwise vacant and phony look at a marriage coming apart at the seams. And Lane was rewarded with a deserved Oscar nomination. As a followup to Unfaithful, Under the Tuscan Sun initially covers similar ground. In both films, she convincingly portrays smart, attractive women inexplicably neglected by their husbands. Unlike Unfaithful, in which Lane embarks on an affair that turns deadly, Under the Tuscan Sun forces her to look for love in the arms of another man. Dramatically, Lane doesn't face the same demands made of her by the sexually explicit Unfaithful. But it does give her the rare opportunity to try her hand at the kind of romantic charmers that Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock monopolize. Lane struggles at first to set the appropriate comic tone, but that's more to do with the gloomy facade and demeanor of the film's opening moments. Once Frances touches down in Italy, Lane lightens up and glows with warmth and charm befitting of her lush surroundings. Frances may spend a little too much moping, but Lane makes her a sympathetic soul with love and compassion to burn. The men in Frances' life are all attractive and charismatic. Raoul Bova makes Marcello honest and caring, but he disappears too often and for too long after his initial tryst with France to make a genuine love connection with Lane. Besides, we long for Frances to end up with in the arms of the older and gentlemanly Vincent Riotta. But Riotta's Signor Martini is happily married, and Frances is not a home wrecker. Oddly, the childless Frances enjoys greater success as a mother figure than an object of desire. She takes under her wing star-crossed lovers Pawel and Chiara, a penniless Polish laborer and the daughter of an Italian olive grower, played with youthful exuberance by Pawel Szadja and Giulia Steigerwalt. She also offers opens her home to gal pal Patti, who's pregnant and suddenly single. Sandra Oh knows that the gay best friend is a stale stereotype that exists solely as a sounding board for our heroine. So she works hard to make Patti a funny and perceptive source of comfort, and one who makes you feel for her own sets of problems and priorities.

Direction

It all comes down to location, location, location for director Audrey Wells. She employs both San Francisco and Tuscany as metaphors for Frances' life during and after divorce. The Bay City is grim, confining and devoid of hope. But the clouds of depression part the moment Frances leaves her broken heart in San Francisco. Tuscany is sunny, inviting and filled with endless possibilities. There are the occasional storms to weather--electrical and emotional--but that comes with the territory. For the most part, all Wells has to do is plop her cameras beside a lake or on a hill and Tuscany's warmth and passion shines strong and bright. This goes a long way to ensuring her second directorial effort is a more radiant and satisfying affair than her first, the solemn and occasionally creepy May-to-December romance Guinevere. But Under the Tuscan Sun isn't just preoccupied with picture-postcard locales. Much humor comes out of Frances' admirable attempt to knock her old house into shape. Taps don't work. Warm water bubbles out of the toilet. Windows fly open the moment a gust kicks up. Yet there's never any doubt that the more work Frances puts into fixing her house, the likelier she's going to repair her life. But Wells makes it too obvious that Frances isn't going to be holed up in the villa by herself for too long. You just know Patti will arrive in Tuscany the second Frances falls for Marcello and inadvertently complicate matters of the heart. And that Patti's water will break before Frances' water pipe woes are finally resolved. Still, these trials and tribulations allow Frances to credibly emerge from her divorce-induced funk and to move forward. You can't help but cheer for Frances when she dances with joy after sleeping with Marcello. Does this mean Frances has found the man of her dreams? That would be telling. And it almost seems besides the point. Wells is more interested in demonstrating that a woman doesn't need a man by her side to be truly happy. Not that Wells wants Frances to live the rest of her days alone. True love takes time to cultivate, no regardless of whether you're in Tuscany or San Francisco.

Bottom Line

What is it about Diane Lane and the men who foolishly take her for granted? No matter, because it's starting to bring out the best in her. So book a trip to Italy and enjoy how Frances got her groove back.