This is one of the most pleasing movies I've seen this year. It's charming, gentle, but very pointed at the same time - it's an Italian SeaChange, but with wonderful Venice swapped for Pearl Bay.
The story is deceptively simple. An Italian family - wife, husband, son - go on holiday. The husband is boorish and inconsiderate, the son plain doltish. The wife is quietly suffering, as all good wives should be, and made to feel idiotically clumsy and helpless most of the time.
Then comes the seachange. She parts accidentally from her husband and son, who get carried away in their tourist coach as she watches helplessly. But perhaps this separation is also her liberation - she goes onto the road, and ends up on her private vacation in Venice, on a quest for... well, more than this will be too much.
This is a love story about the over-40s, but with much wider appeal than that. My youngest daughter (well, 23 is still pretty young) and her boyfriend found it totally wonderful too. And my wife's reaction - well, this sleeper is a keeper.
The jacket quotes Sandra Hall of the Sydney Morning Herald as saying "...like a gelato that melts in your mouth... DELICIOUS". That's too good a description not to quote. This film is sweet, totally delectable and will be viewable time after time.
Those of us who know Venice well will have a special pleasure - few other movies have managed to present the intimate side of the city so well. Forget the grand splendour - this film is set in a very personal Venice of small back streets and tiny cobbled alleyways, the harbour away from the tourist centres, the uncrowded Academia region... time for another visit, I think! In the meantime, Bread and Tulips will keep the romance with Venice alive.
This is a very good 16:9 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with accurate colours that are for the most part quite splendid, and in the closing scenes, totally luscious in their deep richness. There is no obvious MPEG artefacting; the DVD transfer serves very well the typical European love affair with cinematic colour and tone.
Viewers are given the choice of a Dolby 5.1 or two-channel Italian soundtrack; the 5.1 gives more resonance and detailed presence, but both are high quality. This doesn't offer any subwoofer workouts, but the sound quality is high and serves both dialogue and the crisp, pleasing music very well.
Channel separation is very natural and not overdone for either music or dialogue; separation is not artificially heightened; the action stays allied very naturally to the picture-stage.
