Hungry for Italy, two writers find Italy bites back in a black comedy rife with eccentric characters, art and insects.

SYNOPSIS:

‘GONE TO ITALY – BACK LATER’

Quitting dead-end jobs in dour 80s London, young writers Tom and Thea recklessly head off to Tuscany in a rickety 2CV chasing, on a budget, Byron and Shelley’s Romantic Grand Tour. Still novices in their own relationship, their adventure begins badly when, pitching up at a semi-derelict farmhouse beset by heat and unexpectedly noxious wildlife, they have a titanic row. Their Catholic land-lady, disapproving of their unmarried status, hexes them with an ancient Tuscan curse and the cockroach invasion that follows occasions their swift departure.

Escaping to an eccentric villa owned by a deranged Contessa, Tom and Thea are immediately seduced into a bacchanalian farewell party held by her disillusioned student workforce. As autumn begins, the couple encounter the villa’s bohemian ex-pat community, including two quirky Americans and a best-selling Norwegian novelist who, with his preening young lover, question Tom and Thea’s relationship in an acidic yet comedic clash on ‘free love’.

Autumn collapses into unseasonable floods further undermining the villa’s dysfunctionality: electrified shower-heads, no heating and poor hygiene decimate its guests. In their increasingly arctic attic, Tom begins his play about Byron and Shelley as well as a comically unsuccessful attempt to teach a local businessman English. Italy plunges into its worst winter for a generation, freezing pipes, the swimming pool and killing 60% of the olive trees. Tom and Thea huddle in temperatures of -26. Finally defeated, they decamp to a medieval castle presided over by a charming aristocratic, Count Geralamo Riccini and his languid wife Aurora. There, at last, they thaw in front of a roaring fire.

Between colourful clashes with the Count’s characterful Italian work-force, increasing isolation tests Tom’s and Thea’s relationship to breaking point. Summer sees the couple unceremoniously ejected from the castle to make way for wealthier tourists. They take up a lonely abode deep in a secluded valley, ironically near a well-known American literary figure riding high on his recent success translating an international best seller. Invited to his house Tom and Thea earn opprobrium at an hilariously acerbic literary dinner by arguing with an antagonistic and inebriated couple from the New York art world. Back at the farmhouse, surrounded by an increasingly hostile animal, reptile and insect life, Tom and Thea’s isolation intensifies.

Tom’s 30th birthday coincides with the triumphant completion of his play. Returning from a celebration supper in Siena via a strangely mournful end-of-summer firework display their car nearly crashes when a bird of prey collides with their windscreen. Thea tearfully calls time on living in total isolation. The very next day, as if fulfilling the bird’s omen the night before, Tom and Thea are involved in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. With Thea temporarily hospitalised, carless and almost broke, the couple accept that their Italian adventure is over. Tom, realizing that their relationship has undergone some tough rites of passage, proposes to Thea in her sick-bed. She delightedly accepts. They say their Italian goodbyes and drive off for the last time down the deserted Tuscan track.