Sei (#6): Life imitates Art

The bus! Where is the bus?! I stared at the parking lot, panic rising in my throat.

Our tour bus, en route from Volterra to Rome, had exited the highway and pulled over at an “Autogrill” rest stop for a scheduled 20-minute bathroom break. I downed a caffe (espresso) at the standup coffee bar and then headed for the ladies room. One of the toilets was clogged, so I joined an amicable line, and engaged in mostly pantomime conversation about the situation. Once in a stall, some euro coins slipped out of my pocket and slid into the toilet bowl.  Gingerly fishing them out, I was reminded of a scene in a favorite Italian film, Bread and Tulips (Pane e Tulipani) where the main character, a traditional housewife on vacation tour with her family, accidentally drops her wedding ring into a rest stop toilet. The comic retrieval scene which ensues costs her so much time that the tour bus (and her oblivious family) hit the road without her… and thus the plot advances. 

As I stare out at the bus-less parking lot, I begin to wonder if I have entered my own Pane e Tulipani alternate universe. I must have made a mistake… did we come in another door? Rushing from one Autogrill exit to the next and finding no bus, I feel trapped in a surreal nightmare.  I’m not sure just what happened, but some organized person must have dispatched Peter from the still stationary vehicle to retrieve me. Suddenly, he is standing next to me, and with his superior mental GPS, our bus magically re-appeared in a parking lot I had earlier scanned in panic mode.  

If I had truly entered the movie Bread and Tulips, I would have been left behind at the rest stop and a flashy trashy but friendly young woman would have offered me a ride to Venice, and on impulse I would have accepted. One thing would lead to another and I would find myself working in a Venice flower shop owned by a grouchy Socialist poet and living with a new set of eccentric but loyal friends. But let me not be a spoiler for this funny, charming film directed by Silvio Soldini. It has become one of our favorites, meriting multiple viewings, along with another Soldini film Agatha and the Storm- Agata e la Tempesta - which stars the same delicious lead actress, Licia Maglietta, and an engaging supporting cast. The Tiger and the Snow (Tigre e Neige), directed and starring the energetic Roberto Begnini, is a surreal film that takes place in both Italy and Iraq at the outbreak of the Iraq war. We watched a panoply of Italian films via Netflix in the year before our Italian vacation, including older films with Marcello Matrioanni and the incomparable Sophia Loren. In addition to drop-dead gorgeous, Sophia Loren was a talented and hard-working gal, starring in close to one hundred films. The ones we watched, such as Marriage Italian Style, and Yesterday Today & Tomorrow, offered a surprisingly good slice of culture from the 1960’s. Nothing like American movies from that era, they portray poverty, unwanted pregnancy, adultery, and alcoholism as facts of life.  

Mi dispiace, I say as I climb aboard the waiting tour bus, hanging my head in mock shame and real relief. This apparently disarms or at least distracts tour guide Nina who, rather than scold, launches into a language lesson about the meaning and utility of that universally appealing little phrase: I’m sorry. Settling into my cozy seat on the roomy bus, I gaze gratefully out the window at the scenery, pondering how life imitates art.