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.