Under the Tuscan Sun is a 2003 Chick Flick adapted from Frances Mayes's best-selling memoir of the same name, directed by Audrey Wells and starring Diane Lane.
Frances is an author living in San Francisco who is happy until one day, she finds out her husband is cheating on her. She ends up divorced and living in a sad little apartment. She finds this situation intolerable, so when her best friend finds herself unable to go on a coach trip around Italy, she offers Frances the ticket and she accepts. While there, she buys a giant villa in Tuscany (of course) on a whim, and spends the rest of the movie fixing it, and her life, up.
This film includes examples of:
- Adapted Out: Only just averted in the case of Ed, who shows up at the end and becomes Frances' love interest. In Real Life, he and Frances bought the house and restored it together. Played straight with Frances Mayes's (grown-up) daughter Ashley, who appears in the book but not the movie (as the movie version of Frances did not have children with her husband).
- Anchored Ship: Frances and Marcello. An unusual variation in that the party who anchors the ship points out that they were completely reasonable to do so — scheduling mismatches and a bunch of other things that just screamed, "Sorry, I'm not ready to have a relationship right now, no matter how much I want to be" — and the other party accepts this.
- Beta Couple: Pawel and Chiara.
- Big Fancy House: Villa Bramasole, which Frances buys and renovates. A bit run down, but freakin' enormous.
- Bird-Poop Gag: Frances gets pooped on by a pigeon when she visits the house for the first time. The elderly owner takes this as a sign that she is the right person to sell the place to.
- Bookends: The film begins and ends with Frances encountering men whose books she has unfavourably reviewed. The guy at the beginning takes revenge by revealing that her husband is cheating on her (thus kick-starting the whole plot). The guy at the end, Ed, took her constructive criticism on board and becomes her love interest.
- Boyfriend Bluff: A variation. Frances grabs Marcello and pretends to be his girlfriend in order to get rid of some rude admirers.
- Come Back to Bed, Honey: a woman telling this to the Romantic False Lead is how Frances finds out that he is going to be the Romantic False Lead.
- Exact Words: Frances vents to the Italian realtor at one point that she wants to host a marriage at her villa, and for someone to have a daughter there. She gets her wishes... as a pseudo-mother-figure to the groom, and an aunt to the child.
- Fag Hag: Briefly played with, as Frances is the only straight woman on the coach tour which consists mostly of gay men (there are apparently some lesbians as well, which would make sense given that Patti and Grace had originally intended to be on it). They all leave (quite literally on a bus) when Frances gets off the tour to buy the house.
- Fanservice: A fair bit, despite the film's use of Right Through His Pants and Modesty Bedsheet for the sex scenes. Frances strips down to her bra a couple of times, and Katherine shows off plenty of skin. The latter's (much younger) Macedonian lover Zeus is basically a Fanservice Extra, given that he has no dialogue and we only see him from the neck down, wearing nothing but a pair of tight underpants.
- The Film of the Book: It's the movie adaptation of Frances Mayes's best-selling 1996 memoir about buying and restoring an old villa in rural Tuscany, although it is a rather loose adaptation.
- Friend to All Living Things: Frances is a somewhat downplayed example. Her first reaction to an owl flying into her bedroom during the storm is to try and reassure the poor creature, and she later adopts the cute kitten she finds on the beach. She's less keen on the snake, though.
- Gilligan Cut: Francis encounters a writer whose book she criticised, and is told that her marriage is not the happy one she believes it to be. Cut to Frances discussing divorce proceedings with her lawyer.
- Ghostwriter: Frances briefly becomes this when one of the gay guys on the coach tour asks her to write a postcard for him. He rejects the result as the prose is so flowery and descriptive, his mom will know it's not really from him. Quite how he thought she'd react to the handwriting being completely different as well is not known.
- Hollywood Economics: Frances gets $300,000 from the sale of her house, and isn't implied to have a great deal more sitting around. The villa she buys must be worth a million Euro...at least, not counting the renovation with crew. It doesn't quite add up.
- The scene where she makes her offer to the original owner heavily implies that it's a rather paltry sum. She's only sold the house because a pigeon flies over and... eliminates on her, which the owner takes to be a sign from God (or something like that). Francis goes over things like renovation expenses, as well, though it's never quite explained how much she actually has.
- Interrupted Intimacy: At one point, Frances walks into her bedroom ... which is where Pawel and Chiara think they've found a quiet place to get intimate. Since Frances claims the office of Team Mom, this also verges into Parents Walk In at the Worst Time.Frances: You were going to have sex in my bed! I don't even get to have sex in my bed!
- Jerkass: The arrogant German couple who try to buy the villa. Whether the old lady who is selling it dislikes them because of their arrogance or merely because of their nationality (she's old enough to remember World War II and refers to them as "fascisti") is open to debate.
- Last Guy Wins: Frances' actual love interest doesn't show up until about two minutes before the film ends.
- Latin Lover: Marcello. Frances even points out that much of what he says is basically what American women think Italian men say when they're trying to get them into bed.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Pawel, a Polish immigrant, has to fight for approval from Chiara's Italian family.
- Most Writers Are Writers: Justified, given that the whole movie is (loosely) based on a best-selling memoir written by the real Frances Mayes — a writer who has also taught creative writing courses.
- Parental Marriage Veto: Attempted by Chiara's parents.
- Right Through His Pants: To keep the movie's rating down, basically every sex scene involves either this or a Modesty Bedsheet.
- Romantic False Lead: Marcello
- Rule of Symbolism: When Frances first buys the villa, she finds a faucet sticking out of the wall that apparently does... nothing. Near the end of the film, with everything falling into place, it starts to leak... and the film's final shot is of it flooding the kitchen.
- Scenery Porn: At times, the film runs on this. As well as the Tuscan countryside, we also get some lovely shots of Positano.
- Shout-Out: The glamorous Katherine didn't just know Federico Fellini, she also re-enacts the Trevi Fountain scene from La Dolce Vita.
- Spaghetti and Gondolas: The movie arguably wouldn't work at all otherwise, but the trope is taken to ridiculous extremes.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The movie is based on Frances Mayes' 1996 memoir of the same name, but takes a lot of liberties with it. For example, in real life Frances Mayes had got together with Ed before buying Villa Bramasole, and that was done as a conscious decision rather than on a whim while on holiday.
