|
|
Article: `Under the Tuscan Sun'.
- Article from:
- San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, CA)
- Article date:
- September 23, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 San Jose Mercury News. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Byline: Glenn Lovell
Besides teaching the reader how to renovate a drafty Italian villa and its adjacent olive grove, Frances Mayes' best-selling "Under the Tuscan Sun" came with yummy recipes for bruschetta and polenta. Unfortunately, the generic chick flick now affixed to Mayes' sensuous title is less tasty: It's more like processed ham.
An obviously hand-tailored vehicle for Oscar-nominee Diane Lane ("Unfaithful"), the movie version of "Tuscan Sun" is a fraud from start to finish. This "fact-based" story shares, at most, two things with Mayes' memoir: its title and basic premise (writer from San Francisco buys Tuscan fixer-upper). Everything else is ...