Lights, camera, takeoff

Filming the good, the bad, and the ugly of travel

October 19, 2003|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

''You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don't know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. . . . There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event."

DON DeLILLO, ''The Names"

That is as precise a description of what it means to be a tourist in an unfamiliar country as has ever been written, but it hardly sounds like the stuff of cinema. Yet the movies have time and again been able to mine entertainment and art out of the clashing of cultures. Plonk an American down in Europe or the Far East, pull the rug out from under his or her self-assurance, and the suspense is immediate. Why is that person screaming? Where are my papers? What exactly did I just order? The paranoia can be exquisite if it's not happening to you.

Two current films harvest this fertile field, with ''Under the Tuscan Sun" presenting a fairy-tale Italy in which a lonely divorcee can reclaim her true self, and ''Lost in Translation," offering a moodier, richer take on the dysfunctions specific to traveling abroad.

Of the two, ''Tuscan Sun" has the most obvious cinematic roots. The Audrey Wells adaptation of the Frances Mayes bestseller falls into a genre that could be labeled ''Tourist Heaven," in which heroic Americans face amusing obstacles overseas but live to see the triumph of love and English.

The blueprint for such movies is the 1955 David Lean classic ''Summertime," which, admittedly, is a more bittersweet experience than what followed. Starring Katharine Hepburn as an aging Ohio secretary on vacation in Venice, the film's strong suits are Jack Hildyard's color cinematography and the star's emotionally naked performance as a woman who slips into an affair with a married man (Rossano Brazzi) because she knows it's all she will have. Diane Lane has it easier in ''Tuscan Sun," but that's progress for you.

Shallower but more fun is ''If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," the kitschy 1969 Mel Stuart comedy-romance about a busload of American TV character actors (Norman Fell! Peggy Cass! Marty Ingels!) clattering through Europe. Skit-like in nature, the film does have a narrative throughline in Suzanne Pleshette's brief fling with tour guide Ian McShane, but that is generally not a good idea.