By EWAN McDONALD
Blame Peter Mayle. He invented what can only, despite the appalling over-use of the word, be called a genre: burned-out exec quits grey city life, buys rundown house in Med, gets colourful local characters to do it up and take him into their hearts, age-old recipes, family vineyards,
village fiestas.
From a selection of hundreds, Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun was one of the worst written examples, but maybe you shouldn't expect great prose from a Californian poetry lecturer.
Now it arrives in film version, with Diane Lane as Mayes, who has become a San Francisco author who discovers her husband is cheating on her.
When she walks out, her friend (Sandra Oh) gives her a ticket to Italy on a gay tour — the theory being that no one else on the bus will bug her. Within days Frances is getting off the coach and making an offer on a charming little fixer-upper of a villa.
Cue: the heroine moves in, meets the neighbours, hires illegal workers from Poland for the renovation. There are eccentric locals like Katharine (Lindsay Duncan), who we are supposed to believe was Fellini's mistress, which would make her . . . um, err, at least 30 years older, the real estate agent who has a crush on Frances, and the happy-go-lucky family next door, the renovation disaster stories, the thunderstorms, the new lover who just happens to be impossibly young, beautiful, Italian . . .
In short, there's nothing you won't expect, and that will make it just perfect for those who have no great expectations apart from quitting grey city life, buying a rundown house in the Med, and getting into age-old recipes, vineyards and fiestas.
The DVD is beautiful: a 1.85:1 transfer with vivid colours that almost capture the way Cortona looks about now, a commentary from director/screenwriter Audrey Wells, short making-of, three deleted scenes and trailers.
Herald rating * * *
DVD, video rental July 7
