There are movies where the family is a fortress, to be guarded against outside attack. And then there are the ones -- usually aimed at women -- where the family is a prison to be escaped.

These run the gamut from the trenchant and dark (Montenegro) to the light-hearted (Shirley Valentine).

Bread And Tulips, a floridly written feel-good feature at the recent Toronto Film Fest, is firmly in the latter category, an Italian Shirley Valentine -- a Shirley Valentina if you will.

The "Shirley" here is Rosalba (Licia Malietta), a buxom housewife with a blithe, almost sleepy countenance, who accompanies her family on a bus tour of Italy. Despite her outward pleasantness, it says in the press kit, "the beating of her heart is left unheard."

And no wonder, with a family that includes a loud, obnoxious toilet-manufacturer husband named Mimmo (Antonio Catania) and two borderline-hostile sons.

In a plot twist straight out of If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, Rosalba gets left behind at a rest-stop, and is ordered by her angry husband to stay put while he returns to retrieve her, and not incidentally to yell at her some more.

So she continues on her own, hitchhiking, ostensibly homeward. However, she passes her freeway turnoff and continues on to Venice for some private vacation time.

What follows is the creation by happenstance of an all-new nuclear family. Rosalba runs out of money and cadges lodging at the home of a depressed Icelandic waiter named Fernando (Bruno Ganz), interrupting a string of his suicide attempts.

His neighbour, a New Age masseuse named Grazia (Marina Massironi) becomes her new best friend. Fernando turns out to be sole source of support for his estranged son's ex-girlfriend and her child, so, presto, Rosalbao has a new surrogate daughter and grandchild.

The extended family gets even bigger when Mimmo sends an out-of-work plumber (Guiseppe Battiston, who is a dead ringer for Toronto actor Jack Mosshammer) to play detective. Just as he's on the verge of turning Rosalba in, he falls in love with Grazia.

Rosalba, meanwhile, has taught herself the accordion (don't ask) and -- with the urging of characters who keep appearing to her in dreams -- is learning to love herself through the love in Fernando's eyes.

Eventually both worlds must meet, and the loose ends resolve themselves in a rosy, if unrealistic and awkwardly-hurried, way. The heart knows what it wants in Bread And Tulips, and so do the filmmakers. Every eccentric character, plot-twist and contrivance is a means to that end.

(This film is rated PG)

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