Under the Tuscan Sun

A sur­pris­ingly delight­ful movie, Under the Tus­can Sun. I’ve had a thing for Diane Lane since see­ing her in Jack, on some air­plane trip. But then I saw half of her crit­i­cally acclaimed per­for­mance in Unfaith­ful and couldn’t really stand her. Not sure why. And it turned me off of her. I kept think­ing that I’d like to see her in some­thing, but I couldn’t quite shake her char­ac­ter from that movie. I needed to see her in some­thing com­pletely different.

When Tus­can Sun came out, it seemed like a pif­fle of a movie (it is) with no good rea­son to be seen. Turns out it’s a delight­ful pif­fle, with a charm­ingly retro/only-in-the-movies opin­ion of Italy mixed with a nineties gay-is-the-new-sidekick flair that works. And Diane Lane comes off as a some­what weary but win­ning, wiser than she was, mod­ern Amer­i­can woman. Amidst gay side­kicks and retro/sexist Italians.

Unfor­tu­nately, it didn’t bring me back the old Diane Lane, so much as show me a dif­fer­ent one. One I’m not so enam­ored of. She’s nice, and pretty, but still too stressed. I want to see her play­ing a Reese With­er­spoon role. Some­thing where her char­ac­ter only has to emote on the most sur­face of lev­els. I know, I know, I do her act­ing abil­i­ties a disservice.

Any­way, the movie was bet­ter than I thought it would be.