Bread and Tulips

Recently Charlotte Rampling in `Under the Sand' and Tilda Swinton in `The Deep End' remind us that European cinema has long portrayed middle-age women as desirable in a way immature American men are unaccustomed, so conditioned are we to a youth culture that adores naughty teenage waifs and jaded 20-somethings.

Now the Italian `Bread and Tulips' introduces us to the attractive Licia Maglietta as the middle-aged housewife refugee finding love and friendship in Venice. Although the setup of this film left me fidgeting for action, when I saw her liberated from her family and slowly begin her renewal, I fell in love again with Italy and European mature-woman idolatry. I don't know if it's the ample breasts, knowing smiles, or willingness to sass that gets my attention, or maybe all of the above. I do know 2 hours of these savvy women are far more satisfying than any days with Julia Roberts or Kirsten Dunst.

Let me not ignore the true man in this tale: Bruno Ganz, the angel from `Wings of Desire,' plays brooding waiter Fernando, ready at any moment to hang himself until Rosealba renews his love of love and epic verse. Ganz is a marvel of understated acting, a perfect companion to the romantic Rosealba.

The inevitable comparison between director Silvio Soldini and Woody Allen, with their genial sense of city and women, is appropriate, especially considering the similarity between Soldini's romantic Venice and Allen's lyrical Paris in `Everyone Says I Love You.'

`Bread and Tulips' received several David Di Donatello Awards, the Italian version of the Oscars, for best picture, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, director, and three others. To see Rosealba go from frumpy mom to bohemian accordion and tulip player is worth wading through a boring Wayne Knight, wanabee plumber cum detective or over the top, philandering, bourgeois bathroom fixtures magnate husband. Some of this stuff is downright dull slapstick, a little like the sophomoric stumbling of `Life is Beautiful,' but when Rosealba smiles, it's very good.

Pane e tulipani or Bread and Tulips is a wonderful Italian movie. The story is told in a way only a European can, you would never find such a movie in Hollywood. There are no special effects, no gadgets, no fast cars, ... nothing you would probably find in it if this was a Hollywood production. The characters are the real stars in this movie, together with all the streets and canals of Venice.

It's about a middle aged, neglected housewife and mother who is left behind by her family on a bus trip. Her family doesn't even notice she's missing until two hours later. She decides to hitch-hike home and she meets different people. To one of them she says that she has never been to Venice, but that she really would like to see it. The man suggests to bring her to Venice instead of driving her home and so her adventure begins. She meets some interesting people and in one way or another she always influences their lives. But not only their lives change, her life is influenced by it as well.

I guess this must sound incredibly boring to some people, but it really isn't. I enjoyed the movie - which can be seen as a modern fairy tale or as a real story - a lot. I guess it all depends from the viewer. Do you believe finding real love, when it's not supposed to happen to you, could actually happen? Personally I do, but I'm a real optimist, so perhaps that's why I liked it so much. It might also be because it gives a very optimistic view towards life.

I guess the real strength of this movie lies in the fact that even after the movie has ended, you are still thinking about it. The story is simple, very universal, but also subtle and deep.

I could talk for hours about this movie, but I guess you'll have to see it for yourself. My advice to everybody, but especially to the people who love Italy as much as I do: Sit down, relax and enjoy. I give it a 8.5/10.

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.

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.

This is an enjoyable little Italian/Swiss production, that mostly gets carried by its characters.

The movie is sweet, little and innocent. In other words, perfect harmless entertainment. The movie feels warm and sincere, this is due to the setting of the movie (Venice) and its characters, that are all far from perfect but because of that also very humane and in this case also enjoyably quirky at times.

The movie is mostly comical with its characters. They are over-the-top but at the same time kept humane. It helps to make the movie an enjoyable one to watch and at the same time also keeps sure that the emotions of the movie feel real.

The movie features a nice story in which a married mother escapes her normal everyday life after she has been forgotten during a vacation by the tour bus. She decides to take advantage of the situation by hitchhiking to Venic, the city she always wanted to visit. perhaps for the first time ever in her life she feels herself alive and home somewhere, where she really can be herself. She decides to stay for a day but the day soon becomes days and the days weeks.

For a change the movie centrally features a love-story between 2 persons at age and not persons who are still in the prime of their life and are in their early 20's, or something. It's refreshing, dramatic more powerful and involving and in a way also sweeter.

Licia Maglietta is a good leading lady for the movie. and she forms a good couple with Bruno Ganz, who is halve Swiss, halve Italian and by far has the best lines of the movie, that almost sound poetic like. The rest of the supporting actors are mainly for the fun but everyone does a good job at portraying them.

The movie is however not the best made and constructed one. At times they simply choose not to show some of the dramatic responses and just cut away and goes forward in time or back to another location. In my opinion this is a sign of weakness of the film-maker's skills and it's also definitely due to the editing that the movie does not work out at all times.

Nevertheless, you should be able to appreciate and enjoy watching this movie.

7/10

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