A Little Romance (VHS, 1993)

Here was Diane Lane's ("Nights in Rodanthe") film debut, at the tender age of fourteen and watching this movie will show what has made her such a great movie star now. It is the tale of two schoolchildren who run away from very different backgrounds and the action which is driving them in Paris, France. Lauren (Diane Hill) is the daughter of a woman who has been married three times and is currently dating an American movie producer in Paris, France. The son of a French taxi driver, Daniel, (Thelonious Bernard), runs into her at a location shoot and then they become firm friends.

So much went on with hardly a murmur in those days. For example, in the scene when Lauren takes her friends to her bedroom on the occasion of her birthday, Daniel purloins a bottle of champagne from downstairs where the mother is holding a "wrap party" for her boyfriend, George, and carries it upstairs into her bedroom and they are drinking it. But the mother is far more upset by the adult film poster which Daniel's friend has brought Lauren as a birthday gift. With great histrionics and over-reaction, she tears it down telling her husband that they are "having an orgy in there..." The mother's boyfriend, George, is continuously acting inappropriately with everyone and shoots his mouth off at Daniel one time too many, and he turns round and punches him in the stomach, telling him to apologize to Lauren.

When Lauren's parents discover that she is missing, they also find out that they are with an older man, Julius, (Laurence Olivier) but seem unconcerned about this when they discover that he is a "voleur a la tire" (pick pocket.)

George Roy Hill's movie is for hopeless romantics and tells the very unlikely story of two young teenagers who run away from Paris, France, to Venice, Italy, just to live the reality of the legend of the "kiss under the Ponti dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs)" in Venice, Italy, at sunset with all the bells tolling, like the story told them by the old pickpocket, which he says will guarantee that they will be in love forever. Getting to Venice contains all the ingredients of a romantic story and a large helping of hurdles, all of which they manage to overcome.

Also, we see the French unpretentious directness in many of the scenes. Julius's character, played by the legendary Laurence Olivier, who is the catalyst in all of this, contrasts markedly the American characters who play the girl's parents and the film crew who are making another film for Lauren's mother's latest boyfriend, George. A lot of the romance comes from the stories told by Olivier as he warms to his tale, and much of this is done at tables in restaurants where they are sitting, enjoying a meal paid for from the proceeds of another of Julius's robberies.

At the end, ultimately true to himself, Julius (Olivier) is in police custody, and Lauren's father, who has flown to Venice to try and find her, asks him where Lauren is. After a considerable pause and somewhat triumphantly, he tells her father that they are "in a gondola, heading under the bridge of sighs..." "Why?" asks Lauren's father. "For the kiss," explains Julius.

The music throughout the movie has been adapted from two major works by Antonio Vivaldi: his Concerto in D for Guitar and Orchestra and parts of his Mandolin Concertos. In fact the haunting theme played on the single mandolin throughout, is adapted from slow movement of the Vivaldi Mandolin Concerto in C Major.