Tea with Mussolini

Until the brownshirts start busting windows, Franco Zeffirelli's childhood looks charmed. Luca, the directorial alter ego in this piquant film that expands on a chapter of Zeffirelli's autobiography, may be the illegitimate son of a dead fashion designer and a father who acknowledges him only furtively. But 1930s Florence is gorgeous, Mussolini is "the gentleman who makes the trains run on time," and little Luca spends much time nestled under the collective wing of a kindly if eccentric crew of art-loving English and American women that includes Dames Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, and Joan Plowright, as well as dames Lily Tomlin and Cher.

"Which one plays Mussolini?", I was asked by a wag who was betting on Plowright. Actually, the Italian dictator is played by Claudio Spadaro, and Maggie Smith is the haughty hatter of an English aristocrat who has tea with him. Plowright is Luca's surrogate-mother-in-chief. And Dench, taking a break from ruling England in one guise or another, is an aging, Isadora-esque protector of art. Among the Americans, Tomlin is a cheeky, weather-beaten lesbian archeologist, and Cher, resplendent in fancy braids and furs, is a Jewish-American ex-showgirl who deals in wealthy husbands and modern art.

Set in Tuscany between 1935 and '45, the film is, in part, a valentine to the mafia of English-dowager expatriates known as the "Scorpioni," whom Zeffirelli remembers with amused affection. Eventually these ladies, who ignore every indication that the party between Italy and England is over, end up under house arrest in the tower town of San Gimignano. Luca -- who's played at seven by Charlie Lucas and at 17 by Baird Wallace -- does what he can to help them. But the film's real damsel in distress is Cher, whose madcap Jewish-American must ultimately be spirited out via a collaboration between the Italian Resistance and the Scorpioni.

Even with World War II in the margins, Zeffirelli's memoir can seem slight, and the events of the film are sometimes muddled. But the performances are as delicious as anything that could be served for Tea with Mussolini.

-- Carolyn Clay