Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) on Netflix
PG-1320031h 53mComedyDramaRomance
Frances Mayes, a San Francisco writer, loses her home to her cheating husband. Her pregnant friend Patti sends her to Tuscany, where she impulsively buys a dilapidated villa in Cortona.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.8/1065,993 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes62%
Trailer
Plot summary
Frances Mayes teaches literature in San Francisco and is trying to finish a book when she learns her husband has been unfaithful and wants a divorce. He earned nothing while working on his own writing, yet he asks for alimony, and the settlement costs Frances her house. Depressed and unable to write, she turns down a trip at first, then accepts her best friend Patti's ticket for a tour of Tuscany, which Patti had bought with her girlfriend Grace before learning she was pregnant. In Cortona, Frances spots a villa listed for sale, and when the tour bus halts for a flock of sheep right in front of it, she reads the moment as a sign, steps off the bus, and ends up the owner of a dilapidated house.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sternberg had read Frances Mayes's 1996 memoir a year earlier without considering it for film treatment, until he, director Anthony Minghella and actor Matt Damon met Mayes and her husband Ed at a wine bar in the Tuscan town of Pienza.
- The bookstore and the heroine's San Francisco apartment were both filmed at Cinecittà Studios in Rome.
- It took a second meeting between Sternberg and Mayes, in Los Angeles in March 2000 where they were guests of the Tuscan Film Commission, for Sternberg to reread the book and realize its potential as a film.
