First of all I must say how impressed I am with the choice of locations - beautiful Florence and the hilltop town of San Gimignano with its fantastic square towers reaching to the sky. The interiors too really sparkle - a great compliment to the art director. The superb cast ( mainly women ) give wonderful individual performances as Britishers uprooted from their beloved homeland, annoyed and irritated by the upheaval of war in Mussolini's Italy. Lady Hester Random (Maggie Smith) and Arabella (Judi Dench) portray English aristocratic snobs completely out of their depth in their alien surroundings, ever critical of the rich and beautiful Elsa (played by Cher to perfection) and everything else American. One of them remarks about Americans in general "They even vulgarize ice-cream". (This I think is one of the funniest lines in the script). Mary Wallace (Joan Plowright) is a warm-hearted woman who befriends and cares for Luca the child of a broken Italian marriage. Their love and respect for each other is beautifully portrayed. Mussolini (Claudio Spadano) is unmistakeably the fascist leader who fails to keep his promise to protect the ladies and struts about in typical fashion. Despite the foregoing, the remarkable performances add up to something less than perfect. The film just misses out somewhere. Is it the script? Luca delivering messages on his bicycle in the dead of night and the screaming British women running riot and struggling with the army offices for the most part are unconvincing. But this is a comedy drama and should not be taken too seriously. Quite good as light entertainment.
Review of Tea with Mussolini
