Susan Granger’s review of “UP AT THE VILLA” (USA Films release)
If you weren’t besotted by the beauty of Italy in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” this screen adaptation of a novella by W. Somerset Maugham should send you directly to your travel agent for tickets to Tuscany. The story, unfortunately, doesn’t live up to its glorious setting. Set in the 1940s, lovely Kristin Scott Thomas is an impoverished British widow who has a weekend to decide whether to accept the marriage proposal of a wealthy but stuffy suitor, played by James Fox, the recently appointed Governor of Bengal in colonial India, or the amorous advances of a rakish, married American adventurer – that’s Sean Penn. So, instead of making any commitment, she indulges in a duplicitous night of passion with an Austrian refugee, Jeremy Davies, who worships her. She thinks it’s a flighty one-night stand but Davies has other ideas, which result in a confrontation at gunpoint. So much for the pulp melodrama plot. The most pleasurable moments come from Anne Bancroft and Derek Jacobi, Anglo-American expatriates who amuse and entertain Florentine society. Philip Haas (“Angels & Insects,” “The Music of Chance”) directs from a screenplay by his wife, Belinda Haas, who is partial to having actors exclaim, “by Jove!” Very little is mentioned about the rise of fascism and the horrors of Mussolini’s regime except to acknowledge its inconvenient intrusion into the leisurely pleasures of Florentine life. Pino Donaggio’s swelling, soggy score is best described as “elevator music,” but Maurizio Calvesi’s cinematography is sumptuous. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Up at the Villa” is a glossy but dull 4 – basically, it’s Masterpiece Theater at the movies. Better choice: rent the video of “Tea With Mussolini.”
