Bread and Tulips

In Pane e tulipani (Bread and Tulips), a bored, middle-aged housewife is on vacation with her two disaffected teenage sons and her tyrannical, cheating husband. After a mishap in a restroom bathroom, Rosalba (Licia Maglietta) is left behind by the tour bus with her family not even noticing her absence. Impulsively, Rosalba hitchhikes to Venice. The formula in the film for a newfound awakening of the spirit is simple if somewhat unlikely. First, find a spare room in the apartment of an eloquently speaking, if somewhat suicidal, Icelandic waiter (Bruno Ganz). Secondly, replace tacky touristy outfit with a brand new wardrobe of pretty bohemian dresses. Next, befriend your questionably legitimate `holistic beautician and masseuse' neighbor (Marina Massironi). After, find a satisfying job working for an anarchic florist (Felice Andreasi). Also, confront the plumber/ amateur detective (Guiseppe Battiston) your husband has hired to track you down. Finally, aid your new band of quirky friends along the path of self discovery while doing so yourself. The basic storyline of Bread and Tulips is not an especially original one, but the film is exceptional in its surprising delicacy in which it handles the story. The humor is sophisticated and the romantic story is never overly sweet. This movie is worth seeing not because it has some deep, life changing message. It is simply a romantic comedy made to entertain, but it is romantic comedy at its best. It is handled very differently than it would have been if it had been made in Hollywood, from the subtle sexiest of Licia Maglietta's character to the total lack of sexual references between the main romantic couple. The characters are unrealistic but not to the point of being ridiculous. The ending is happy without being disgustingly sentimental. Bread and Tulips was directed by Silvio Soldini who also co-wrote it with Doriana Leondeff. It won nine David di Donatello Awards, the Italian Oscar equivalent, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor. This film is a refreshing new look at a clichéd idea.

Maybe you have to be Italian to really understand. But this is a delightfully funny picture with moments of tenderness and pathos, a quintessentially Italian approach to the bored housewife story. It's also a wonderful view of Venice from an Italian perspective. It's a bit of a fantasy, a bit of a fem-flick, a bit of a travelogue. I've been to Italy several times. This movie makes me want to go back again. Bravissimo!

A sweet movie that pretends to be anchored in reality. When bored housewife Rosalba is "forgotten" during a trip, on a highway petrol station, she decides to go wild for one day and hitches a ride to Venice.

Once in Venice, Rosalba is fascinated by the city and by a way of life that is not merely utilitarian but also spiritually fulfilling. The flower shop where she finds a job is a first example of beauty as necessary to the soul.

Rosalba brings a bunch of flowers home every evening, to Fernando, the enigmatic waiter that rents her a room. She finds an accordion and remembers how much she loved playing. She strikes up immediate friendship with Grazia, the beautician next door. Most of all, her life is not anymore just being a servant to her unfaithful husband and selfish grown-up sons.

To avoid making the plot too dreamy, Rosalba lives in realistic surroundings: Fernando's apartment is messy and located in a cheap area, the Venice shown is not the luxury facade and Rosalba undergoes only a minimal physical transformation. Yet, it looks like she turned from shabby and vulgar middle-aged woman into a shiny, ageless creature just because of her happiness and a cheap yet feminine dress.

What I appreciated most in Bread And Tulips (English title), is the subtlety of the humor.

There are some truly wonderful comedic small touches here, such as when the plumbing 'detective' is confronted at gunpoint by Ganz's very linguistically eloquent character, and fails to understand him. There are some very funny lines. But it's not a gutbuster. It's more subtle than that.

A most human drama. Characters are drawn from real life, given just enough idiosyncrasy to make them interesting, not abstractions. I thought it was as gender fair as any movie I've seen : both the women and men are equally shown as flawed, ignorant, sinister, mean, or noble and generous without making the case for one sex being preponderantly more prone to such failings or graces than the other gender.

It is directed with a nurturing gentleness reflective of a female director . . .although the director is a man and the co-writer a woman. The story's protagonist is a woman whose heart has been relegated to second-class by all the self-serving males who surround her. . . her intimacy sacrificed. A woman can understand another woman in this conflict more naturally than men usually can which makes the director's accomplishment all the more remarkable.

If you're up for a romantic movie comedically driven but full of pathos, look no further. I recommend this movie heartily.

Wish there were more movies this well done. . . .

Bread and Tulips (2000)

A feel good movie that is also a good movie. It's beyond just warm and colorful, with scenes of Venice night and day, and beyond just triumphant, with true love winning in more ways than one. It is most of all populated with great characters. Italian leading lady Licia Maglietta is a wonder of naturalistic acting. She is sympathetic of course, but not a cliché. She plays a housewife on a diversion away from her family, and she looks and acts like a housewife. As strong as she is, and as independent, she is also devoted to her family. The fact she left them at all is perfectly unfolded as an accident that she turns into an opportunity, all by intuition.

The man she meets is no paradigm of handsome or charming, in fact he's just the opposite. But he is so inherently good, a really decent human being, she comes to like him, and look out for him. Played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, he matches Maglietta's believable ease and imperfect, quiet intensity. The rest of the cast is truly supportive, and tips just slightly (or more than slightly in one case) into caricature, to reminds us, I suppose, that this is a movie, a fantasy, a comedy in many ways.

But it's also a deeply serious and moving love story between two middle-aged people who are ready for renewal.

I have a feeling many people, especially people with families or those conservative at heart, will find the basic premise of a woman leaving her family in a glib and almost carefree way and not going back for a long time to be shameful or even sinful. Her kids are normal distracted teenagers who like her when they notice her, her husband is a hardworking and loud businessman who doesn't beat her, her home is her own and comfortable. In other words, she has a really normal life, a good one by most measures. Does everyone have the right to up and leave a working family relationship because they feel a bit restless? Is this movie a worship of selfishness?

Or is it a reminder that life is short and you have to get to what really matters, and be with people who are truly wonderful and good, no matter what?

I can't think of a more joyous way to ask the question.