Tea With Mussolini (1999) **

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli. With Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Cher and Judi Dench. What's next, "My Dinner With Hitler"? "Milosevic In Love"? Actually, it's a gentle, almost apolitical little drama about a group of excentric English and American ladies in Florence during World War II. Refusing to return home, they are interned as enemy aliens by the Fascist authorities, making life truly miserable for their captors. Often quite funny, the film enfolds at a leisurely pace of a traditional comedy of manners.