About this product

Product Information

In this gently comic coming of age story, set in Florence over the course of the 1930s and 1940s, the illegitimate son of an Italian merchant is raised by a group of prim English ladies whose passion for Italian culture have made them permanent residents. With the rise of Mussolini and the outbreak of war, the ladies are interned as prisoners, and the boy risks his life to help them. It's a lushly photographed ensemble piece that instils in the viewer Zeffirelli's contagious passion for Italian art and affection for these brave ladies.

Product Identifiers

EAN5050582362657

eBay Product ID (ePID)72508994

Product Key Features

ActorCher, Joan Plowright, Lily Tomlin, Judi Dench, Charlie Lucas, Maggie Smith

Film/TV TitleTea with Mussolini

DirectorFranco Zeffirelli

Release Year2010

FormatDVD

GenreDrama, General

Run Time116 Mins

Additional Product Features

Certificate15

Country/Region of ManufactureItaly

Number of Discs1

Additional InformationBased in part on his autobiography, director Franco Zeffirelli's TEA WITH MUSSOLINI is a drama with comic accents about a group of British and American travellers on an indefinite visit to Italy in 1935, when, as one character puts it, 'Mussolini was just a man who made the trains run on time'. Luca (played by Charlie Lucas) is a boy living in Florence whose family situation is precarious at best; his mother has died and his father has little time for him. Fortunately, he's a welcome guest with Mary (Joan Plowright), a English woman visiting Italy to soak up European culture. Mary and her friends -- high-toned Lady Hester (Maggie Smith), pretentious Arabella (Judi Dench), American art collector Elsa (Cher) and cheerful lesbian Georgie (Lily Tomlin) -- enjoy the cultured, creative atmosphere of life in Italy, and their initial response to the rise of fascism is to arrange a polite meeting with Mussolini to make sure he and his soldiers mean well. After some time, Luca's father becomes concerned that the boy is soaking up too much British influence and enrols him in a boarding school in Austria; by the time 1940 rolls around, situations have changed radically for everyone.

ScreenwriterJohn Mortimer

CinematographerDavid Watkin

EditorTariq Anwar

Movie/TV TitleTea With Mussolini