Cast: Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Cher, Judi Dench, Lily Tomlin, Charlie Lucas, Baird Wallace, Claudio Spadaro
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Producers: Riccardo Tozzi, Giovannella Zannoni, Clive Parsons
Screenplay: John Mortimer and Franco Zeffirelli based on "The Autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli"
Cinematography: David Watkin
Music: Alessio Vlad and Stefano Arnaldi
U.S. Distributor: MGM/G2
Alongside Kenneth Branagh, Franco Zeffirelli may be the best-known living film director of Shakespeare. His screen versions of the Bard's works include The Taming of the Shrew (with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor), Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. On the same weekend that a new interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream comes to North American theaters, Zeffirelli's latest, Tea with Mussolini, will also open, albeit with less fanfare. Yet, for the 76-year old film maker, this may be the most personally meaningful movie he has made during his lengthy career because the events related herein are based on real-life moments from his childhood.
Tea with Mussolini is officially labeled as semi-autobiographical. While much of its inspiration comes from Zeffirelli's autobiography, novelist John Mortimer (the creator of such popular characters as Horace Rumpole and Leslie Titmuss) was brought in to bolster the story's dramatic framework. This has resulted in the fictionalization of some real-life events. According to the press notes, a key moment in the film, in which Lady Hester Random (Maggie Smith) has tea with the Italian dictator (Claudio Spadaro), was inspired by an historical occurrence when an English lady by the name of Violet Trefusis met Mussolini.
The film opens in 1935, when Mussolini is still regarded as a reasonably benevolent leader - "the gentleman who makes the trains run on time." In Florence at that time live the Scorpioni, a group of English and American women who have established their existences away from their home countries because of their appreciation of Italian art and architecture. They include three Englishwomen - the motherly Mary Wallace (Joan Plowright), the haughty Lady Hester Ransom, and the flightly Arabella Delancey (Judi Dench) - and two Americans - the lesbian archeologist, Georgie Rockwell (Lily Tomlin) and a globetrotting art collector, Elsa Morgenthal (Cher). With a little help from her friends, Mary is raising 7-year old Luca (Charlie Lucas), an Italian boy whose mother has died and whose father will not officially recognize him because he was born out of wedlock.
After spending some time in 1935, the movie leaps ahead to 1940, when the winds of war are blowing at gale force. Luca (now played by Baird Wallace) has returned from Austria just as his surrogate mother and her English friends are being taken into custody as enemies of Italy. With the invasion of Pearl Harbor and the United States' declaration of war against the Axis powers, Elsa and Georgie are also taken prisoner. Meanwhile, Luca, who remains free, has joined the Italian resistance and works to help his foreign-born friends.
From a narrative standpoint, Tea with Mussolini is uneven. The first half, which centers on the events that take place before the war, is solidly plotted and well developed. After 1940, however, the movie becomes episodic and inconsistent in tone. There are several times during this portion of the film when instances of humor, which worked well during the first hour (some of Lady Hester's anti-American comments are delicious), seem forced. And at least one subplot (detailing Elsa's romance) has a soap opera-ish resolution. Overall, however, Tea with Mussolini succeeds in presenting a less-familiar perspective of Italy during World War II.
One of the movie's great strengths is its sense of place and time. It is worth noting that many of the locales chosen for filming have undergone few changes over the past few centuries, so they look the same today as they did during World War II. Zeffirelli, drawing in part on his own memories, has crafted a picture that takes viewers back to Florence and San Gimignano during the 1930s and 40s. Much of the production was shot on location, which serves to accentuate the sense of legitimacy.
The lead group of actors can be described as a "dream cast." Cher, who has chosen her roles carefully since winning the Best Actress Oscar for 1987's Moonstruck, is perfect as the flamboyant, extroverted Elsa. The trio of highly respected English actresses - Dame Judi Dench (recently honored by a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her extended cameo in Shakespeare in Love), Dame Maggie Smith (an Oscar winner for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), and Lady Joan Plowright (perhaps best known of Enchanted April, which earned her an Academy Award nomination) - bring an undeniable level of quality to their performances. Lily Tomlin is effective in a smaller role, and newcomers Charlie Lucas and Baird Wallace approach their joint part with poise.
In general, Zeffirelli, represented in the film by Luca, has succeeded in presenting audiences with an enjoyable two hour look back through time at the world of his youth. It's a fairly light and easily digestible experience, with a tone that favors a mixture of humor and good feeling, and only occasionally takes a dark turn. Tea with Mussolini is an incomplete memoir with spotty character development, but, in part because of the way it was filmed and in part because of the strength of the cast, it's still an effective entertainment.
© 1999 James Berardinelli