Redheadedgirl: I just watched the preview for Under the Tuscan Sun and mom went, “….is that a remake?” and I told her no, I made her watch it back when it came out. “Sandra Oh?” “Yeah!” “Scenery porn?” “Yeah!” “Food porn?” “Yeah!” “HOME RENO PORN.” “YES.”

Sarah: Watching Tuscan Sun. OMG the galloping sexism she and Sandra Oh wade through in the first scene. All these poor men and their overwhelming emotions.

I like how the story skips the discovery and what all, and focuses on her emotional devastation, and that her ex husband is a predatory shitbag.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah, the story isn’t about her injury, it’s about her recovery.

Sarah: And she’s walking out with nothing. Literally nothing. Ouch.

Redheadedgirl: A vase!

Redheadedgirl: Oh my god that hat.

Sandra.

Sarah: Ok, the fact that Sandra Oh and Kate Walsh play a couple and she’s a doctor is making my day.

Carrie. This movie is a zillion times better when Oh and Lane are together.

Redheadedgirl: “Can you *69 Italy? I’m gonna try.”

Sarah: Sandra Oh has outstanding comedic timing. I had no idea. I’d seen her mostly in Grey’s Anatomy

Redheadedgirl: This is the second movie I saw her in – she was the principal in The Princess Diaries.

And her sucking up to Julie Andrews is PERFECTION.

Carrie: I’m about half way through the movie but I found the pre-Italy stuff to be so painful that I skipped most of it. But I am totally shipping Oh and Walsh in Grey’s Anatomy now

And I’m loving the found family thing.

But the more fantasy lovely the movie gets the more my heart breaks because the friends I know who have gone through or are going through divorce don’t get to buy villas in Tuscany. Their reality is so painful and so hard every single day.

Redheadedgirl: Have you seen this before?

Sarah: Nope.

Redheadedgirl: I hope you have food.

Sarah: “It’s a gay tour of romantic Tuscany.” Having friends like that is amazing and wow.

I sense sunflowers are a THEME.

Redheadedgirl: So I haven’t actually watched this movie in years…possibly since before I became a reviewer.

Sarah: I love stories where the universe seems to conspire to send a message about something.

Redheadedgirl: The universe said, “Here is your house. You make it a home.”

Sarah: Girl, you let the tour bus leave you for a house with birds living in it.

I love that part of making a room her own includes Nutella and a spoon.

Redheadedgirl: These people are all way too chipper for their first day in Europe.

Sarah: I think I read the book. It’s different from the movie.

Redheadedgirl: It’s very different.

Sarah: Question: Why would you pour your heart out to your real estate agent while he builds a fire in your bed stand?

Answer: Italy.

Question: Why would someone say, “Please stop being so sad or I have to cheat on my wife with comfort smexing?”

Answer: Italy!

Redheadedgirl: “It’s a nice little villa. Rather run-down, but redeemable.” IT ME.

Sarah: Rodney and all the men writers know very little.

Redheadedgirl: Dudes.

And Rodney in the back window going, “What are you doing?”

Sarah: There’s a weird sort of gaze thing with the directing juxtaposing faith and sexuality. Mary on top of cleavage. Mary over a very made up woman selling liquor. Mary being escorted at high speeds by good looking men through town.

Question: Why do I want to eat right now?

Answer: Italy food porn

Girlfriend, what are you feeding these dudes?

Redheadedgirl: ALL OF THE FOOD

Sarah: Question: How has she been in Italy that long and not tasted limoncello?

Answer: I HAVE NO IDEA. Continuity error I presume

Question: Was the sunset greenscreen super cheesy?

Answer: Italy!

I love how every time the nuns are together they’re eating.

I also love that the friendships are as important as the romance. You drop everything for something good, you drop everything to help a friend.

NICE OLD MAC LAPTOP

Carrie: I’ll never forget my first laptop *sigh*

Sarah: Question: Of course Marcello has a girlfriend. Or something. Yikes.

Answer: That wasn’t a question.

Question: Is it like a theme that the romantic partners are feckless in this movie? Yikes.

Answer: Kinda. Except the poor married real estate agent who builds fires in the bedstand and fishes drunk ladies out of the fountain.

Question: Are the nuns always eating?

Answer: Italy!

Okay, that was a strangely satisfying movie.

I liked that the emphasis was on her friends, her found family, and on being present for people and happiness and sadness. I wish there wasn’t so much disappointment found in other people, and I wish that ancillary characters didn’t always speak in Profound Allegorical Stories all the time, but it lent to the fairy tale quality of the story (which also helped ameliorate my ‘How the F are you paying for all this?’ questions of pesky realism).

It’s total eye candy and food porn and restarting your life porn, and gosh the scenery.

So from me: B-.

Redheadedgirl: It’s implied that she’s writing and editing as a job, and I guess the exchange rate was AMAZING?

Sarah: Yeah. Has to be. Speaking as a professional blogger and book reviewer, villas requiring restoration in Tuscany are not in my budget.

Not on top of the hair and wardrobe she rocks.

Redheadedgirl: She does make the offer while factoring in the amount the renovation would cost, and basically says, I have this much monies, I can has house?

And it’s a lowball offer, buuuuuut comes with a side of bird poop.

Besides, it’s a house, not a Vespa!

“Minus the work on the place…hammers, buckets…men… chocolate.” She’s factored in the important things into her offer!

(20 million lire is about 12,000 USD)

Sarah: And a wall caves in, water comes out of weird places, the toilet is boiling – there’s always overages, etc. The suspension of disbelief was rather hefty.

Redheadedgirl: And no immigration questions. None!

Sarah: Oh, not at all. Come on over, have a baby, nbd.

Carrie: Oh, Sandra don’t be sad you can come over here and have the baby. Linden will change all the diapers.

Sarah: Like, did Patti’s ex own everything? Where did her stuff go? The absence of money troubles is fascinating.

It makes me think about the book Paris Letters, which starts with the writer (it’s nonfiction) asking herself, ok, how much money do I need to quit my job and live in France for six months?

So she sat down and did math and figured it out, scaled back, sold all her stuff, quit her job and off she went. But the part where the scaling back was going on, that was pretty hard core. And she didn’t have anyone else to worry about, just herself.

I am still thinking about how pretty the movie was, and how Diane Lane looked marvelous in every single shot (HER HAIR MY GOD). And when money and financial (and citizenship/immigration) worries aren’t among the things she has to be concerned about, her emotional journey (and food and renovation journey) can take center stage.

With sunflowers and that perfect wardrobe and hair. THE HAIR MY GOSH. It was like hair style porn.

Redheadedgirl: Yessssss.

Carrie: Diane Lane is the most beautiful woman in the history of ever.

Redheadedgirl: My favorite dress is the orange dupioni shirtdress in the wedding scene.

The white one is amaze balls, of course, but I love me some dupioni.

Sarah: The white one is a miracle. Not a single wrinkle or smear. I’d last .02 seconds in that

The orange one is incredible, too.

Carrie: Y’all were not kidding about that white dress.

Redheadedgirl: Also Zeus’ zebra print panties are CGI.

He was originally nekkid and they added panties in post because butt-cracks are too risque.

BY THE WAY KATHERINE, I’ve been trying your whole ladybug advice and the part where you forget about it is that hardest part.

Sarah: I think by “forget” she meant “distract yourself” because she’s still going on about Fellini how many years now?

Redheadedgirl: Frances has the best Just Been Fucked hair.

Sarah: Her hair is flawless all the time

Redheadedgirl: See, you can tell that David Sutcliffe (Ed) is the dude for her because he understands how to process and cope with a bad review.

Carrie: So I have really conflicted feelings because this is such a lovely fantasy and it’s right smack dab in the middle of a time when I’m helping a friend through an ugly reality. But I like this movie as a story about resilience and the idea of healing through grief. Presumably most of us know that when we are sad most of us when not solve our sadness by moving to Italy and actually through most of the movie Diane Lane is quite sad even though she is, in fact, in Italy. But we do hope that, as the lawyer says, “We will be happy again” and sometimes that happiness has to come from reframing our dream – the wedding isn’t hers, and the people she cooks for and the family she has aren’t the ones she pictured, but they are still joyful.

I also loved it that the guy at the end was almost an afterthought – she finds her place and rekindles a sense of joy separately from finding a guy. And his reaction to the bad review won my heart INSTANTLY.

So despite some failures of mine to relax into the concept the movie won me over. I’d be good with a grade of B- or B.

I meant to mention earlier that it bugs me that the Italians are presented stereotypically and only in service to her story

Sarah: Yes. That is true.

Redheadedgirl: Okay, so. You wanna know why I love this movie so much?

I saw it in the theater after the implosion of a brief and weird relationship, and I just moved to Boston. I was lonely. I was sad. I was trying to figure out what my life was supposed to be now that I was here.

And this movie about a woman who reinvented her life after a break up and a move and she found a family and made a life, and after all of that, after making her own wishes come true (a wedding in her house, a family in her house) and after a string of “nope, not this guy, not this guy, not this one either” only then does the Actual Hero show up.

So I can’t possibly be objective about it, and now I just want to cook for everyone. Come over I’m cooking a goose this week.

(It’s Michaelmas on the 29th.)

Carrie: RHG I would love to lie on your couch while my meds cook my brain and every now and then you could walk by and pop a piece of goose in my mouth.

Did you watch along with us this month? What did you like better: the food porn or the scenery porn? Do you also want RHG to feed you goose?