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Review:
 If I
were Frances Mayes. I’d sue. Mayes' best-selling 1996 memoir tells
the true story of she and her boyfriend Ed, and how they find
happiness in the Italian countryside while renovating a
fixer-upper they bought.
For some reason, Audrey Wells didn’t think that this story,
which after all became a best-seller and had wonderful reviews,
was good enough to be a movie, so she basically changed everything
except the protagonist’s name and the Italian house. The results
are, in fact, rather good, but if I were Ed, I’d be furious….
Frances(Diane Lane) has just been kicked out of her house and
home by her louse of a husband and his bitchy fiancé (both of whom
never appear), and is consoled by her best friends Patti(Sandra
Oh) and Grace(Kate Walsh), who according to ‘00s cinematic PC
rules are a lesbian couple.
They buy our heroine a tour of Italy with a gay tour company,
and she bails soon after when she sees a piatzza for sale. She
just gets off the bus and buys the place.
How cute!!
In fact the entire movie is too cute by a half. Diane Lane is
cute, Sandra Oh [who arrives pregnant after Grace dumps her] is
cute. The house is cute, Frances’ first lover is cute(Raoul Bova),
her mentorKatherine(Lindsay Duncan), hell her CONTRACTOR (Massimo
Sarchielli), and his "crew" -- three Polish workers (Valentine
Pelka, Sasa Vulicevic and Pawel Szajda) are cute…if it were any
more saccerine it would make the strait membership of the audience
wretch. But it wasn’t made for them, of course, it was made for
their wives and girlfriends.
This is a chick flick. No doubt about it. The acting is great,
and the secondary characters are quirky enough to pretty much
carry the film themselves, although they don’t have to. This is a
delightful for the target audience and the rest of you out there
will like it too.
Eric Lurio
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