With Liam back in Blighty, I’m making do. Our Turkish neighbour, Bubbly Beril, knocked on the door and shoved a DVD in my hands.

Under the Tuscan Sun

Based loosely on a true story, Under the Tuscan Sun is the tale of an American woman whose marriage collapses around her. She emerges from deep despair and paralysing sense of failure by making a new life in Tuscany, all by chance. It’s a sentimental, sugar coated yarn of love lost and a life regained. Boo to the nasty man who dumped her and hurrah for the cast of colourful characters who pick her up, dust her down and help her start all over again. I cried like a child.

Of course, life isn’t really like a movie. Not everyone’s that nice. The female flotsam washing up on our shores seeking comfort in the arms of a Turk are mostly onto a hiding to nothing. It can work but the odds are stacked against it. For me, the most significant part of the film was that the Yankee expat first arrived in Italy on a Tuscan gay tour.  Beril had picked up the subplot. She was saying, ‘I know and I don’t mind.’

Imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, married, middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country. I chronicled our exploits with the mad, the bad, the sad and the glad in a blog for the whole world to ignore. Then came the book which became a critically acclaimed best seller. Its success opened out a whole new career for me, firstly as an author, and now as an indie publisher. Who'd have thought it? Certainly not me. In June 2012, we ended our Anatolian affair and paddled back to Britain on the evening tide, washing up in Norwich, a surprising city in eastern England, then to the wilds of Norfolk as the only gays in the village. I’m sometimes nostalgic for our encounters with the hopeless, the hapless and, yes, the happy go lucky. They gave me an unexpected tale to tell and for this I thank them.

11 thoughts on “Under the Tuscan Sun”

  1. Oh Lord! Yes, I saw that movie too, and found it so sugar-coated I almost gagged on it half way through. How unreal it was! Utterly predictable, right the way up to its inevitably happy ending, full of promise and further yuckiness. Sorry. The gay character was the only vaguely interesting one, I must say. And that dreadful cad who tossed her on one side like a used… Oh, my.

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  2. Haha! Thank you for reminding me of this movie. I have seen it on cable probably 40 times…I don’t know why, but it must have had the lowest royalties or something, because it seemed like it was playing at least once a week on a different channel! I didn’t care for it at first, but I guess after the 10th time, it finally broke through and now I actually find it rather charming. Maybe I’ll see if I can pick up a bootleg copy in downtown Lima this weekend!

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  3. Lol it’s very different from the book, they sexed it up loads for the film, as they have to do really. There was no hot blooded Italian lover, there was only ever Ed but Francis Mayes welcomed the changes as the other suggestions by the production team of car chases, ghosts in the villa and murder were too horrible to contemplate and the basic message of living in Tuscany was still there in the script.

    I don’t remember the gay tour from the book but it was a good plot device in the movie and I liked it.

    Frances has a wonderful website and is still writing about Tuscany.

    Karen (book and film geek)

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  4. I fell in love with the film the first time I saw it. Who could deny having the urge to explore the world, to find yourself, and to also find love in the way? I commend Diane Lane’s performance on this film and all the people who helped her (the character) accept the fact that shit do happens, and the only thing you can do is either: 1) let it define you or 2) let it make you stronger. 🙂

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  8. Love Actually – right up there with Shawshank as far as I’m concerned. As for Tuscan Sun, never seen the film but think ıve read the book ……read so many they all get mixed up into one unless they really stand out for me 🙂

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  9. Pingback: Under the Tuscan Sun – Reprise | perking the Pansies

  10. Yes, a movie full of charm. I’m busy getting rejections for my own Italian romance (extract on http://www.davidgeebooks.com), which I first started writing to show my mother that there would be life – and romance with a Sicilian prince – after fifty. This turned out not be the case for my dear old ma (Alzheimer’s came to woo her) but I thought the notion would appeal to readers – seems I was wrong about that too!

    TEA WITH MUSSOLINI is my favourite movie set in Italy – dream cast, beguiling storyline.

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