Under The Tuscan Sun

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * *)

A contrived and unabashedly sentimental adaptation of Frances Mayes' best-seller, this slight and sunlit picture is held aloft - or at least rescued from crashing - by the lustrous performance of Lane in the main role.

No acting slouch - she earned an Oscar nomination for her work as the straying wife in Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful - she's far better here than the material she's given to work with.

Her Frances is a successful writer who finds out that her husband is cheating on her (watching the realisation sink in recalls her brilliant wordless solo scene on the train in Unfaithful) and is quietly going mad in an apartment building full of heartbreak.

She ends up as the lone straight in a "gay and away" tour of Tuscany when two lesbian friends cancel their booking - and once there she makes the impulsive decision to buy a rundown villa.

Wells, who wrote, plays what follows for laughs but keeps a firm grip on the heartstrings as well.

The parallels between her renovation of the building and her life are obvious and a little forced and the film never manages to invest its predictable plot elements - the well-meaning but inept work gangs, the English-mangling hunk who sweeps Frances off her feet - with anything that might stop them feeling like cliches.

Only Oh, as Frances' pregnant Chinese lesbian pal, has anything like a flash of idiosyncratic individuality and she's charming.

But it's all light and lovely, as delicious as the fabulous meals the heroine seems effortlessly to whip up. We don't worry that she's engaged in what looks like a million-dollar refurbishment when she's already said she's penniless. She may look anxiously about her and wonder how it's all going to turn out. We - having seen and enjoyed this sort of idle escapist fantasy before - are in no such doubt.



Cast: Diane Lane, Sandra Oh, Lindsay Duncan, Raoul Bova, Vincent Riotta Director: Audrey Wells Running time: 115 mins Rating: M (low-level offensive language) Screening: Village, Berkeley cinemas