Tea with Mussolini

Tea with Mussolini

This film could have been good if an editor had taken an ax to it. There are a dozen different story lines and they go nowhere. A particular source of aggravation was the actor who played the young Italian boy as a teenager. To call him wooden would be an injustice. He just wasn't there. Unbelievable, considering all the good young actors who are available. The various actresses were fine. Cher was good, despite the criticism and the other "ladies" were too. But the script was embarassing.

I saw "Tea With Mussolini" with high expectations, which made my reaction all the more jarring for I viscerally felt disgusted with this offensive screen soap opera (my apologies to soap operas) trying to pass itself off as high-minded, poignant drama. It's been a couple of years since I rented this, but I still remember this as one of the worst movies I've seen. I am not sure about the relation of the film makers to "A Bridge Too Far", but I was surprised to see footage from that film included in "Tea With Mussolini". The flawed illogical plot seems to repeatedly and frustratingly focus on the trivial background issues. Using WWII fascist Italy as a setting, every scene seemed to be a contrived set up for a melodramatic acting exercise. Assessing the acting performances separately and objectively from the ham-handed dialog and plot, most of it was unremarkable IMO, yes, even Cher. Perhaps this movie was based on a true story, but I felt it even mildly offensive to use the tragedy of WWII like this.

Before I saw this movie, as a sneak-preview, I saw a poster of it and thought to myself "what a totally uninteresting movie". So I must say I was a little prejudiced. But I was right. The start of the movie showed a black and white still of Florence, and that was where the nice things stopped. The next 45 minutes mainly boring conversations followed in a movie that was totally without a direction. In the cinema itself, the "oh no" words were said frequently when Cher appeared. Why her? Why here? I want to go home. Seen it, didn't believe it, hated it.

A fantastic portrayal of English ladies in Mussolini's Italy before and during the American participation in WWII. Another poster states Cher was out of place in 1930's Italy, to the contrary. She played the part of a Rich American Jew, in Italy, no less. Of course she was out of place. English Ladies vs. Vulgar Americans join forces, however reluctantly, and triumph. Pleasurably satisfying to find it is based on true events. World War II's effects on those lucky enough to be outside the camps of Germany, Russia, etc., were not as tragic, but poignant, nonetheless. Presented with a curious artistic flair of charm and drama, comic relief, and the tenacity of a motley selection of characters, from the perspective of a boy who learned appreciation of art, life, love and honor through their eyes and hearts. So, what happens when one has a spot of tea with Mussolini?

Miss Maggie Smith,Miss Judi Dench,Miss Joan Plowright.Those names will tell you all you need to know about "Tea with Mussolini".Followed by Cher and Miss Lily Tomlin,they comprise a sorority of scenery - chewers. After a restrained and rather charming start the movie goes alarmingly out of control as the above - named ladies go into their respective overfamiliar acts.A winsome child turns into a graceless adolescent,all the Italian characters are Opera Buffa creations that surely the director could not have meant us to have taken seriously. I presume Signor Zefferelli had a culturally - enriching childhood under the care of an English lady of independent means with a circle of lovable eccentric expats surrounding him.I feel they have been ill - served. In 1935 Italy briefly flourished under a relatively benign form of Fascism.Benito Mussolini its charismatic dictator turned further towards Nazism and clean streets and a regular rail service did not compensate for shrinking freedom and internment of foreigners and Jews. Interfering at every level of Florentine society but understanding none of it,the elderly English viragoes were tolerated at first but as the German ideal grew stronger Il Duce washed his hands of them and they were hustled out of the city into a none - too - arduous exile in the country.Out of this thin material Signor Zefferelli has spun "Tea with Mussolini".Unfortunately it has turned out to be rather like a "Carry on Merchant - Ivory ",only lacking a wan performance from Helena Bonham -Carter to make it complete. Only Signor Zefferelli knows how much of his movie is based on real events.Surely the scene where Miss J.Dench and her little dog interpose their bodies between a group of German soldiers and an historic building they are about to rase to the ground and manage to deter them until such time as they are forced to withdraw by the advancing Allies is the stuff of fiction.At least the mutt has the grace to look shamefaced at being party to such a nonsense. If it did in fact occur,the Allied High Command should have parachuted her into Berlin in 1939 and saved themselves a lot of subsequent grief.

I wish I could give this movie a "10" but I can't. I'm not exactly sure why but to me, it's a solid "9". The characters in this movie are engrossing and distinctively human. One cannot help but fall in love with the Scorpioni and their individual quirks. Cher, as usual adds her own distinctive flair to the mix and I cannot envision any other actress playing her role. She was perfect. There are so many aspects to this movie to enjoy. So many emotions. Joy, pain, sorrow, love, hope, reconciliation, admiration, pride, selflessness...so many. It's a great movie worth watching. Enjoy.

Young boy from a broken home is 'adopted' by a group of elderly British women in pre-WWII Florence, Italy. Director Franco Zeffirelli's rather self-conscious valentine to his own childhood is slushed with poetic sentimentality, most of which feels distinctly artificial. The young lad at the heart of the piece isn't at all memorable, and the ladies unfortunately fare no better (but where else can you find Cher, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Lily Tomlin and Maggie Smith together on-screen?). Some of the more subtle moments (such as the child waiting for someone to pick him up after school) touch on a velvety kind of youthful longing that is rather sweet, but the drippy dialogue and obvious "scene stealing" opportunities for the femme stars drain much of the sincerity from the mix. ** from ****

After nearly 20 years as a top pop and television star, Cher suddenly skyrocketed to film stardom in the mid-80's, walked off with an Academy Award, ranked among the top ten box-office stars and just as suddenly disappeared from the big screen in 1991 after one last hit "Mermaids"(1990) cleaned up at cinemas. In 1999 she made a tremendous comeback with a multimillion selling CD "Believe"(Warner Bros, 1998) and most impressively returned to the big screen with a luminous performance in Franco Zefferelli's "Tea With Mussolini"(MGM,1999). Reviews were mixed but after I saw this in the movie theater, I felt the film was rather good. Based on an autobiography by Zefferelli recounting his early years trying to survive the Nazi-Mussolini atrocities of WWII. During this dangerous time Zefferelli was protected by a coterie of socialite dowagers played splendidly by Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Lily Tomlin and of course Cher who was perfectly cast as a gorgeous Jewish chanteuse. The story has some holes and the film was probably edited down too much for its US release that cause some continuity issues but this is overall a charming, thoughtful period piece highlighted by Cher at her latter day peak. Shame this success did not resuscitate her dormant film career. She has made nothing of note since.

"Tea With Mussolini" is a good movie with just a little bit missing. There isn't a major flaw present, nor is there any outright bad filmmaking. The film itself has a lot of colorful characters, gentle subplots, twisted dialogue and emotional depth. What it is lacking is just about everything else. The story is said to be a nugget out of the life of writer director Franco Zeffirelli, who in the mid 1930s and the early 1940s in Florence, is replaced with a young boy named Luca who is being raised in as an orphan. He doesn't know, but his mother is dead, and his father is married to another woman and doesn't give a bag of bones about his rightful him. There we have it, the first act of the movie. Just a few scenes. Just a few minutes. We meet the characters and discover the problem: Luca has no one. The message so simple and sweet, thus it is almost a shame that the second act begins immediately with the solution: The boy's father's secretary, Mary Wallace, decides to adopt him. She is part of an eccentric community of British refugees called the Scorpioni, who sip tea and take part in Italy's wonders. The team includes Arabella (Judi Dench), Georgie (Lily Tomlin), Mary (Joan Plowright) and is led by the snotty Hester (Maggie Smith), whose late husband was England's ambassador to Italy, working with the dictator Mussolini. The boy becomes indulged into the group making many life long friends. A subplot in the film deals with Hester's hostility against Elsa (Cher), a rich American art collected providing help for the Scorpioni and Luca's future, sharing the same interests as the ladies. As the war grows more and more powerful, and when Italy enters the side of Germany, the English are classified as enemies who must be strung together into a small shelter to be held for the duration of the war. The plot gets more and more complicated, to the point of feeling a sense of a false second act. But after analyzing the movie a little more in depth, I observe it's structure is nothing more than the cunningly common three act formula. There are several stories in one here, making the movie's structure deceiving. The performances are pretty good. Cher especially does well with another perfectly casted character worthy of a nomination for best supporting actress. Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith and Lily Tomlin form the perfect team the old ladies' club, all delivering top notch performances. A further nice touch to the film's credit goes to the amazingly realistic aging process of Luca, from young boy to teenager, the resemblance of the actors (Charlie Lucas and Baird Wallace)make this an emotional journey easy to buy into. I suppose that within the boundaries the filmmakers do a good job of giving us variety, but the boundaries are too strict here. I felt like that seeing the glamorous Italian scenery and a bunch of elders enjoying life wasn't exactly enough to hold interest for the running length, which is almost two hours. True, the characters provided an interesting prospective of life in Italy in the 1930s, but even they couldn't hold the movie together for two hours. I liked "Tea With Mussolini," but I am sure many audiences will not. The movie is soapy and historical (one of the better period film's to come down the road in some time, may I add), the thematic elements may though some off, and there isn't a whole lot of relevance in the film either. Not a great production by any means, but "Tea With Mussolini" does end up coming off as a marginally passable journey into the heart of Italy in the 1930s.