They who must be obeyed

>> Tea With Mussolini gets tragically sweet

by JULIET WATERS

John Mortimer is known for a lot of things, but not for his sensitive, touching portrayals of older women. Mostly he's known for Rumpole of the Bailey and his battle-axe wife, aka "She Who Must Be Obeyed." So it's a surprise that the biggest weakness of Franco Zeffirelli's tribute to older women, Tea With Mussolini, is that the women of Mortimer's screenplay aren't nasty enough.

An exception can be made for Lady Hester (Maggie Smith), the snotty, Fascist-loving leader of the "Scorpioni," a gang of expatriate British women living in Florence just before WWII breaks out. It includes Joan Plowright, the surrogate mother of a young illegitimate Italian boy (supposedly based on Zeffirelli as a child), and Judi Dench, an aging bohemian. On the periphery are two younger American ex-pats, Lily Tomlin, a lesbian archeologist, and Cher, an art collector and trashy ex-showgirl.

The Scorpioni have supposedly earned their name for their British snobbery and wit, but Lady Hester seems to be the only example of this. A fanatically naïve supporter of Mussolini, she makes a pilgrimage to see the dictator after troops start throwing bricks through her favourite tea room.

Along with his assurances that she is under his "special protection," she even gets a picture of her having tea with "Il Duce." Every time soldiers move in to destroy another part of their world, she pulls this picture out, and every time she and her friends survive, she credits Mussolini.

Smith deserves a special medal for saving a movie that just gets a little too sweet a little too often. She props it up until the wonderful ending where aging women kick some Fascist Italian butt. It's almost worth sitting through trite gimmicks--like a cute dog escaping death by Fascists, three times. But not quite.

Plowright and Dench do the best they can with largely uninteresting characters. Tomlin hams up the lesbian angle once too often and looks like she's been excavated from one of her archeological sites. Cher has her moments, but overall she delivers a plastic, narcissistic performance, and despite her recent bitching, it's no surprise that Zeffirelli cut a lot of her scenes.

These are tragic casualties in a rare showcase for older actresses, and for not giving them better roles, someone should be shot.

Tea With Mussolini opens Friday, May 14