Under the Tuscan Sun

One of the best things to do on a mopey evening is to curl up and watch a trashy movie and eat chocolate. Under the Tuscan Sun is a film directed by Audrey Wells, based loosely on the travel novel of the same name by Frances Mayes, who is played by Diane Lane.

With beautiful cinematography of the stunning Tuscan countryside, the film tells the tale of writer Frances' move to Italy, and her new life as she renovates the villa she impulsively buys. It is a typically Hollywood take on Italy, but good-humoured fun all the same. Still slightly upset that she ends up with Christopher from Gilmore Girls instead of the dashingly dreamy Raoul Bova though.

Bramasole

'I am about to buy a house in a foreign country. A house with the beautiful name of Bramasole. It is tall, square, and apricot-coloured with faded green shutters, ancient tile roof, and an iron balcony on the second level, where ladies might have sat with their fans to watch some spectacle below. But below, overgrown briars, tangles of roses, and knee-high weeds run rampant. The balcony faces southeast, looking into a deep valley, then into the Tuscan Apennines. When it rains or when the light changes, the facade of the house turns gold, sienna, ocher; a previous scarlet paint job seeps through in rosy spots like a box of crayons left to melt in the sun. In places where the stucco has fallen away, rugged stone shows what the exterior once was. The house rises above a strada bianca, a road white with pebbles, on a terraced slab of hillside covered with fruit and olive trees. Bramasole: from bramare, to yearn for, and sole, sun: something that yearns for the sun, and yes, I do.'

from Under the Tuscan Sun - Frances Mayes