In Love with France, At Home In Italy

It was no stretch for Audrey Hepburn to act like the princess of a nameless country. To be a princess often ranks high on the dreams of what-I-want -to-be-when -I-grow-up, but as we see, the job was not as great as it was cracked up to be. It can get tiresome to have to say, day in and day out, "so happy to meet you."   As it turns out, the "so happy" phrase becomes a leitmotif of the film. The bored Princess says it as a mere royal reflex until the day she can look the princely virtuous Gregory Peck in the eye and really mean it.  When the doctor who gave her the magic injection to counteract her tantrum gave her permission to be happy, he had no idea that a lifelong love affair with Rome would ensue.  I hadn't realized until this recent viewing that perhaps the main theme of the film is the power of memory. Although Princess Ann and scoop-hunter Joe Bradley each go off alone at the end with no guarantee of living happily ever after, they ...

Looks like paradise and a great place to have to oneself for a few weeks, no? Well, it pretty much is. But only by day. The other night I went down to turn off the light in the kitchen only to find that it had been taken over by flying and crawling aliens. They were everywhere, and I had to jump out of my delicious torpor and into a killing frenzy. Last year’s invasion of the flying ants had resumed! They had made an initial appearance the other day, but I had taken what I thought were definitive extreme measures to reclaim my turf. (Just goes to show that the Ancient Greeks did not have a monopoly on hubris.) I had removed all temptations from the counter and ferreted them out of the most unexpected places. I think the other members of the family might be surprised to know that they are not the only ones in the house to love coffee. The biggest swarm of them was on top of and under the machine. But there were some tea-totalers, too, who had decided to set up residence in the...