ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

Copyright  © 1999 by Michael Segers,  All rights reserved 

Tea with Mussolini

How strange—two warm, charming films, open on the same weekend, each reminding us that the truly special effects of movies are the effects they make upon our eyes, our ears, and our hearts. Both are set in Tuscany, a region of Italy which seems doomed to choke on its own quaintness.

Both will make a better showing on video. Many of us old-timers see the jazzy, snazzy world of the megaplexes—overpriced popcorn, over-volumed video games, and young folks at the "customer service" booths who demonstrate once again that youth is too good a thing to waste upon the young—as a foreign country. It is a country as foreign as the fairy lands of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, which we’ve previously dreamed about, or the horrible new Europe of the current topic of discussion, Tea with Mussolini.

These are films to share with old friends, and when I was talking about this Tea with so much sympathy with a friend of mine, I was amazed to hear him call it "a delightful film." Now, delightful is as much my kind of word as effluvium was Faulkner’s. My friend is not one easily delighted. But, delight him, this film did. And if it can delight him, it can probably delight anyone who will give it a chance. Just about the only bad thing I can point out about this film is its chances. The night I saw it, there were only four other people in the theatre. The newest Star Wars installment was playing at more theatres in the megaplex than that.

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Tea with Mussolini is allegedly autobiographical—although there are complaints that he did not have the Resistance experience of his fictional stand-in Luca (Charlie Lucas, as the child, Baird Wallace as the teenager). The true interest of the film is the "scorpione" (scorpions), a group of elderly British women in Florence, who help raise the young child.

Joan Plowright (Mrs. Lawrence Olivier) is Britannia herself at her best and sometimes broken-voiced dottiest. So much of the warmth and humanity of the film derive from her characterization of Mary Wallace. (That her next assignment is next year’s Dinosaur is only one more charm for me.) Judi Dench, fresh from portraying British Queens Victoria and Elizabeth (leaving stand-up comics to speculate whether her next British queen will be Boy George), takes a career-challenging role as the art-obsessed, untalented dog-lover Arabella, giving it a depth of humanity the character herself lacks. Question: if a dog appears in the first reel, must it be thrown out a window halfway through the film?

Dench, by the way, has a link with Maggie Smith, since both played in the 1986 charmer, A Room with a View, based on E. M. Forster’s novel about a group of Brits delighted by all things Italian. But Smith is in a room of her own here. She can act with her eyelids, putting all the complexities of a character out front but with subtlety. With Lady Hester, doyenne of the British colony in Florence and clueless, doting grandmother, she is challenged to flex every acting muscle she has, and she does not disappoint.

Like Smith’s best known characterization, the impetuous teacher from thirty years ago in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Lady Hester shows a curious susceptibility to fascism. How could two women so dedicated to their own concepts of beauty have been taken in by something so ugly? It is not simply a matter of denial. The oafish dictator who had tea with Lady Hester just does not know what is being done in his name… and that is that. But that is not that. Miss Brodie and Lady Hester both lack the moral center from which to judge a fascist. Near the end of the film, when Lady Hester swallows her prejudice and pride, she admits her stupidity in trusting Il Duce in a moment that adds a fifth or sixth dimension to this complex characterization, which, if all else fails you, makes this film worth seeing.

As if fleshy Italian fascists and golden British dowagers didn’t make a rich enough brew, two startling American women are steeped in the tempestuous teapot as well. Cher plays a former showgirl who has switched to the more lucrative career of marrying wealthy old admirers. She looks as weirdly out of place in Italy in the thirties as she does any time and any place else. In snooping about the Internet Movie Database, I found that in a third of her eighteen films, Cher is identified as playing "Herself." Well, even though she is called Elsa in this film, who else could she be, sporting her gaudy clothes and equally gaudy attitude?

Lily Tomlin plays Georgie, an archeologist, a role that doesn’t contribute much to the film but does give Tomlin the role of a life time, dancing with beautiful women as casually as she dukes it out with a soldier. Just as Elsa finds the strength of her femininity, so Georgie flaunts the strength of her masculinity.

The British-American hostilities provide some of the funnier moments of this film, which although it is being marketed as a comedy, is a serious matter. Lady Hester, observing the treat that Elsa has bought Luca, comments that Americans can even vulgarize ice cream.

And, there is a plot in here somewhere, several plots. Most of the time, it’s hard to see where things are going. There’s a lot of Zeffirelli’s trademark shimmering schmaltz (remember The Champ from 1979, or are you still trying to forget it?), as well as a lot of beautiful scenery, and just enough historical references to pique interest. Italy’s descent into Hell under Mussolini has not attracted Hollywood’s attention the way that Germany’s collapse under the hellish Hitler has. It comes as a jolt to realize that this is part of a recent trend in movies—looking back to World War II.

Don’t expect anything high tech here, but do look for high human interest and a rare showcase for actresses of "a certain age." The most characteristic moment of the film comes when Mary uses Romeo and Juliet (it seems we can’t keep Shakespeare out of a film these days) to teach Luca about the love, loyalty, and friendship that are the themes of this film. There are few more delightful ways—and I have that word on good authority—to spend a couple of hours looking back on the not so good old days than with this elegant cuppa’.

Whether you are cycling through Italy or pushing your way through the crowds lined up for other films on Friday night, keep your feet dry and your heart full of noble thoughts. I’m sure Lady Hester would agree, but Georgie would, just for the heck of it, stomp in the next mud puddle she could find.