Consider for a moment why you spend time and often money watching movies? I don’t want the public answer: The one that makes you sound interesting or intelligent. I don’t expect an answer in the comment box, because I want the truth, regardless of how vulnerable it makes you.

Shadows in the Sun, a small film set in rural Italy, examines motivation through the eyes of a lionized writer who has written nothing in 20 years, and a young editor sent to convince the writer to return to his desk. His trio of daughters represent the varying degrees of feminine power. The village priest, played by Giancarlo Giannini, represents the other worldliness of the creative process. Less talk more faith.

Harvey Keitel, is the writer. His performance is poignant and restrained, although the tough old scribe he plays is not. Joshua Jackson, Dawson’s Creek’s Pacey (The one who got Dawson’s girl.) portrays the editor who wants to be a writer. This is a fish out of water…or at least a salmon swimming upstream story. The confused and emotionally repressed men heal each other through the power of the word.

I chose the film, about which I knew nothing, because it was photographed on location in one of the most romantic countries on the planet . The same motivation for watching Under the Tuscan Sun or Kenneth Branagh’s ode to Shakespeare’s Italy.

The al fresco dining, the quaint cafe and the ancient inn with the paper thin walls…they are the Italy for which I long. Film takes me there…and other places currently out of the question.