Tagline: Life offers you a thousand chances… All you have to do is take one.
An American lawyer (Diane Lane) quits her stressful job and travels to Tuscany, Italy looking for a new life, deciding to buy a derelict villa near the village of Cortona. While rebuilding her new home and learning how to live in another country, she finds a new start on life, and love.
When San Francisco writer Frances Mayes (Diane Lane) suddenly finds herself divorced and feeling hopelessly lost, it is of all things a house that comes to her rescue. More precisely, it is a fresh way of life that saves her. She decides to be spontaneous, even bold about things that frighten her. Very little else makes sense; an opportunity presents itself.
Why not buy a house in Tuscany? Like a swashbuckler of the heart, Frances is called upon to be fearless – courageous in the face of thunder and lightning, steadfast before walls which topple in a roar, determined to fill an empty house – but with what? Harder still, she is called upon to embrace love again. At first, she is challenged by the love of her friend Patti, who all but forces her to accept the gift of an Italian trip. Once in Tuscany, she is provoked by the angelic teases of a hedonist named Katherine (Lindsay Duncan), who urges her to, in the words of Fellini, “live spherically,” to grab life while it is passing within reach. As Frances tries, she is beguiled by Signor Martini (Vincent Riotta), attractive realtor who helps her buy “Bramasole,” the rosy villa that has caught her eye.
She is also both stirred and taunted by the halfcomic, half-dire charade of young love being acted out by one of her handymen, Pawel (Pawel Szadja), together with Chiara (Giulia Steigerwalt), the daughter of a local landowner. Isn’t heartbreak hard enough without having to be embroiled in other people’s dramas?
When a jaw-droppingly handsome Italian named – what else? – Marcello (Raoul Bova) crosses her path, Frances feels her whole being snap wide awake. Happiness beckons. But now she really has something to be frightened of. Could she survive a second catastrophic heartbreak? Would Tuscany?
Read the Full Production Notes
Directed by: Audrey Wells
Starring: Diane Lane, Raoul Bova, Sandra Oh, Lindsay Duncan, Dan Bucatinsky, Vince Riotta, Giulia Steigerwalt, Kate Walsh
Screenplay by: Audrey Wells
Production Design by: Stephen McCabe
Cinematography by: Geoffrey Simpson
Film Editing by: Arthur Coburn, Andrew Marcus, Todd E. Miller
Costume Design by: Nicoletta Ercole
Set Decoration by: Nick Evans, Mauro Passi, Cinzia Sleiter, Cynthia Sleiter
Music by: Christophe Beck
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language.
Studio: Touchstone Pictures
Release: September 26, 2003
