She moves effortlessly between laughing and crying, between hurling a beautiful vase onto the ground in rage and straight-facedly grasping an Italian statue’s penis while entering the throes of passion. She’s at turns jubilantly sexy and insecure, despondent and passionately angry, sometimes in the span of a single scene.

Lane, fresh off her Oscar nomination for Unfaithful, digs as deep into Frances as physically possible, giving a naturalistic, raw performance that the script alone doesn’t really demand. Without her, the whole thing would feel frivolous and unbelievable, too fantastic even by early-aughts standards. It’s all very Nancy Meyers by way of a drunken Fellini. Over the course of two hours, she has a torrid affair with a hot Italian man, forges deep friendships with her eccentric neighbors, cooks a shit-ton of pasta, starts writing again, and hosts a wedding at her eventually gorgeous home. The primary issues she faces over the course of the film - outside of getting over her ex - are figuring out how to fix her villa with the help of a motley crew of builders (all of whom are a little bit in love with her), getting over writers’ block, and getting laid. While in Italy, the depressed and slightly manic Frances stumbles upon a crumbling estate and spontaneously buys it.

Her loyal and sardonic best friend, Patti (Sandra Oh), who’s in possession of a spare Gay Tour of Tuscany thanks to a new pregnancy, ships Frances off to the idyllic Italian countryside. When we meet Frances, a renowned writer, she’s about to find out that her husband is cheating on her and that his mistress wants to purchase their shared house. It helps, too, that the central crises faced by Frances Mayes (Diane Lane), the protagonist of the late Audrey Wells’s 2003 rom-com drama, are relatively benign and occasionally delightful in nature. Under the Tuscan Sun is the rare film that hits all four quadrants of escapist cinema: romance, real estate, Italian food, and female friendship. Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Buena Vista Pictures “The where she’s like, ‘I’m still considered a viable sexual entity!’ - I’m like, ‘You can still have 12 babies, what are you talking about?’”

Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes