Under the Tuscan Sun

Director: Audrey Wells

2003 / 113min / 35mm

Adapted from Frances Mayes’s 1996 memoir of the same name, Wells’s irresistible sun-dappled romantic comedy stars Diane Lane as a recently divorced American writer who takes up the renovation of a dilapidated villa while on an impromptu vacation in Tuscany, and finds herself contending with fumbling new romances, eccentric neighbors, lovelorn friends, and other unexpected appurtenances of her new life. A gentle, charming work of lightweight pop escapism, given just enough emotional ballast courtesy Lane’s sublime central performance.