Tea with Mussolini

Tea with Mussolini

Tea with Mussolini is a 1999 Anglo-Italian semi-autobiographical film directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It tells the story of a young Italian boy’s upbringing by a circle of British and American women before and during the Second World War. Young Luca is the illegitimate son of an Italian businessman who shows little interest in his son’s upbringing.

About Tea with Mussolini in brief

Summary Tea with MussoliniTea with Mussolini is a 1999 Anglo-Italian semi-autobiographical film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, scripted by John Mortimer. It tells the story of a young Italian boy’s upbringing by a circle of British and American women before and during the Second World War. The film begins in 1935 in Florence, Italy, where a group of cultured expatriate English women – called the \”Scorpioni\” by the Italians – meet for tea every afternoon. Young Luca is the illegitimate son of an Italian businessman who shows little interest in his son’s upbringing; the boy’s mother, a dressmaker, has recently died.

Luca’s father decides that Italy’s future is with Germany rather than Britain and sends Luca to an Austrian boarding school. Five years later, Luca returns to Florence with the intention of using Elsa’s trust fund to study art. He arrives at the house just as they – and Hester’s ineffectual grandson Wilfred, disguised as a young woman for his safety – are being rounded up and put onto a transport truck, which he follows to the nearby Tuscan town of San Gimignano. The major has orders to evacuate the Scorpioni but Lady Hester refuses to cooperate.