Product Details

• Actors: Diane Lane, Raoul Bova
• Directors: Audrey Wells
• Format: NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (449 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 5559913014
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #600,576 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Though she made her first movie at the age of 13, Diane Lane has only blossomed into a true star in her 30s, and Under the Tuscan Sun marks her full flowering. After a brutal divorce, Frances (Lane, Unfaithful, A Walk on the Moon) is persuaded by her friend Patti (Sandra Oh) to take a tour of Italy--where, on a whim that she hopes will rescue her from her desperate unhappiness, she buys a rundown villa and sets out to renovate it. Along the way, she gets advice from a former Fellini actress, meets a scrumptious Italian lover, and helps support Patti after her own relationship derails. The conclusion of Under the Tuscan Sun holds no surprises, but the deft turns and observations along the way are delightful. Lane carries the film effortlessly but surely, exuding both heartbreak and re-awakening passion. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker

A soft-core renovation fantasy for educated women. Frances (Diane Lane), a San Francisco writer and teacher dumped by her adulterous husband, goes on a bus tour of Tuscany and falls in love with a crumbling old villa. After many blissfully undramatic episodes-an ancient wall falls down, a toilet mysteriously emits boiling water-the house gets scraped, plastered, painted, and gardened back into shape. It's Frances's life, of course, that really needs work. Luckily, in Rome, she finds Marcello (Raoul Bova)-yard-wide shoulders, blue eyes, all of Italian manhood in a white suit-and drives off with him in his Alfa Romeo convertible. There's a lot more of this sort of harmless, pleasant, inconsequential stuff, with much of it redeemed by the good humor of the writer-director Audrey Wells, who serves up clichés and makes fun of them at the same time. With Sandra Oh as a sharp-tongued Bay Area lesbian friend of Frances's who arrives in Tuscany to have a baby. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Loved and Beloved by All, September 30, 2003

By 

MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews
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What starts out as an Italian "Money Pit" with all the attendant broken pipes, crumbling walls and incompetent handymen makes a turn for the better about a third of the way through: a more emotionally centered and revealing movie,"Under the Tuscan Sun."
The luminescent Diane Lane stars as Frances, an intelligent, loving women with close and committed friends who finds herself in a situation that many people do: with a mate who has fallen out of love, wants a divorce as well as possession of a much loved and painstakingly renovated house, this one in San Francisco. After the divorce Frances goes to Tuscany on a lark, falls in love with a villa there, buys it and proceeds to renovate it. The villa then is the physical manifestation of the shedding of her old life and marriage and the hope for the renovation and rehabilitation of her love life as well as her life in general.
That she probably places too much faith in the physical to solve the emotional does not detract at all from the guts and hope that it takes to do so. And Lane is so psychically centered and open as Frances that you cannot help but be moved by her situation.
There are some silly plot lines and performances that I wish weren't, but with a central performance as attractive and genuinely loving and feminine as Lane's, "Under The Tuscan Sun" is as warm and inviting as bread just out of the oven.

59 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best chick flick in a long time!, April 12, 2004

By 

Meg "Livin la vida loca in Maine!" (Caribou, ME, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Under the Tuscan Sun (Widescreen Edition) (DVD)

I am peturbed that Amazon would spotlight two bad reviews. This was an awesome movie that kept me watching it from beginning to end. I haven't read the book, but after watching that movie, I do intend to. It's amazing how uplifting this spirited movie was. Diane Lane was supurb without coming across as trying too much. We never get to see her husband "Tom" who screwed her over royally in the divorce, which I think was a good decision. The movie stays in the present looking ahead to the future with a sense of hope and promise. Pick up this movie for an excellent movie night - even if you're not a chick!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The biggest surprise of the year! This film is a marvel!, October 3, 2003

By 

Rene Barton (New York, N.Y.) - See all my reviews

We'll I'm not usually one to go to see comedy-romance films but my girlfriend insisted and I was persuaded by the fact that Diane Lane (one of my favorite actresses) was starring in it. Honestly, this is a very good movie. It is one of the best surprises of the year. The film is edited in a way that never makes it seem boring or long-winded and the film is very (I mean very) entertaining, with some great dialog and some excellent comedy and well-timed laughs. A few times I was uncontrollably laughing it was so funny. The acting was amazing with Diane Lane giving one of her best performances in the lead role as Frances Mayes. The film looked great and had an excellent soundtrack as well. I recommend this film very much indeed, even to guys because it isn't cliched and slushy in the same way other romantic films are. It sure makes a great date movie - Under The Tuscan Sun is a marvel!