The perfect film for me because it includes:

a)      Beautiful scenery – this is the kind of film you’ll watch over and over for the escapism factor.

b)     Writing – I love creative heroines, and I identify with Frances’s need to get away in order to find her muse again.

c)      Renovation – one of my own passions; my properties in both Kent and France were wrecks when I bought them, and I very much enjoyed making them into homes.

d)     Passion, romance, love, love, love!

Diane Lane plays Frances Mayes, an American writer who’s struggling to put her life back together after the breakdown of her marriage. When a friend offers her a free holiday in Tuscany, Frances grabs the chance to get away from it all, in the hope that some Italian sunshine can shake her out of her gloom and her writers’ block.

And so the action of the film moves to beautiful Tuscany – so many wonderful panoramas to behold! During her holiday Frances indeed finds a way out of her depression: by means of extending her holiday into permanent residency, when she purchases a dilapidated villa and hires a crew of workers to renovate it. Over time, Frances settles into her Tuscan life, making friends with some interesting characters, and she helps a local Romeo and Juliet encountering obstacles in their love by offering her home as a wedding venue.

And does Frances find love herself? Well, to tell you that would be to ruin the ending! Suffice it to say that, soft-hearted romantic that I am, if I’m recommending this movie, you know you can expect to have a smile on your face come the end.

Watch with a glass of fine Chianti Classico in hand for a true Tuscan taste. (Don’t be put off by the Hannibal Lector connotations of Chianti wine: he liked it for a very good reason! It comes from the Chianti region, in central Tuscany, and is made with the delicious Sangiovese grape, so called for the Latin sanguis Jovis – ‘blood of Jove’; Jove being the king of the Roman gods, Jupiter.)

And if you enjoy the movie, be sure to check out the memoir on which it is based. As well as evocative writing, the book contains some wonderful Italian recipes.