Romantic comedies are a great genre because they can be funny yet serious and still have a happy ending. Like the recently released "Passionada," "Under the Tuscan Sun" has the feel of an appealing foreign film…in English, though the look is conventional Hollywood, at least initially. This is what you'd expect from a film starring Diane Lane (nominated for best actress in "Unfaithful" last year). The colors and the characters warm once we're in Italy, however, and we're asked to stretch the imagination and think about what is going on other than the obvious. Yes, there is a happy ending, but thank goodness neither the journey nor Frances's (Lane) fate is formulaic.

Frances is a successful San Francisco writer, in a deep depression after a particularly cruel divorce. Her husband, while working on a research paper (he claims) fell in love with someone else and dumped Frances. Pouring salt in the wound, he is filing for alimony and he and his new love plan to live in the house¾ because of good schools in the neighborhood. Shall we conclude that the girlfriend is pregnant? Bottom line is that Frances has been figuratively stripped naked and put out on the streets. Her new home is in an apartment complex, overrun with recovering divorcees. Some have been in recovery for years. It's a stopgap ghetto for the emotionally down and out.

Frances's best friend Patti (Sandra Oh) has just found out she's pregnant. Since she's in her first trimester and doesn't want to fly, Patti and her lover decide that they will exchange the two coach tickets they had for a romantic gay tour of Tuscany for a first class ticket for Frances. She turns them down at first but then realizes that she needs to be somewhere else¾ soon, and before you know it Frances is on a "Gay and Away" bus tour in Tuscany.

While glancing at the pictures of properties for sale in the window of a Tuscan real estate office, Frances sees a charming house with the name of "Bramasole"; translation…to yearn for the sun. A short time later when her tour bus stops to let animals cross the road, she looks out of the window and sees Bramasole, bathed in the Tuscan light. Making one of those "go with the flow," gut decisions, she leaves the bus, suitcase in tow, and knocks on the front door. The house is being shown by a real estate agent and because of a positive sign, delivered by a fortuitous bird, she and the owner immediately bond and she gets the house for a good price.

Restoration of the house is a metaphor for repairing the damage in Frances's life, of course. As the walls come down Frances begins to open to life again. She does meet a lover, Marcello (Raoul Bova); and though he is a charismatic and pivotal distraction, he is not the solution. Real personal growth comes from the deepening relationships Frances develops with the people of her adopted village of Cortona. Vincent Riotta as Signor Martini, is wonderful and kind, as the real estate agent, who is married and faithful to his wife but `in love" with Frances. A young Polish worker, on the crew restoring the house, and an Italian girl fall in love but her father strongly objects to their proposed inter ethnic marriage. "He has no family," the father says, and Frances finds herself proclaiming that she is the boy's family.

Perhaps most influential to Frances is the beautiful, free spirited Katherine, a woman in her 50's, living alone but not lonely in the town. Portrayed by Lindsay Duncan, Katherine is beguiling; a protegee of Fellini in her youth, Katherine quotes Fellini freely, and occasionally, in the public piazza, recreates scenes from his films when she's had a few too many glasses of wine. She epitomizes the thought that one should make life an adventure and snatch opportunities from the table of life for the short time we are here.

This is a fantasy that confuses you at times because it seems so real. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful. You want to go to Tuscany. The characters are at times overdrawn but in the sense that Renee Zellweger brought to "Bridget Jones's Diary." Diane Lane has the earnest wit of Zellweger and the elegance of Angela Bassett, and is therefore able to elevate this film, like Bassett did in the John Sayles movie "Sunshine State."

Just as in her debut role in "A Little Romance," two decades ago, Lane allows a spirited sense of adventure to lead her character to true love. We've all been dumped or hurt by someone, and she shows us how to not only survive, but be healthier and happier than ever.