Esther Freud wrote Hideous Kinky, a good book that became an even better movie. Love Falls would be a good movie too, but it's a lousy book.
It would be a good movie because it would be set in Italy and have very pretty stars (isn't that enough?). The protagonist Lara would be played by some nubile young ingénue who would flit around a Tuscan villa in her bikini, having sex with her boyfriend, played by some impossibly virile young male star. The older male lead (Lara's father) would be played by someone handsome but remote, like Ralph Fiennes, and he would get his sex scenes also, with the 30-something female second lead. This part would happen in Florence, so there would be lots of café scenes and art museums, too.
I had to force myself to finish this book. The only things that propelled me forward were the descriptions of the villa and its gardens, the descriptions of the food, and the descriptions of Florence (more food, lots more art and architecture). I didn't care one jot about any of the characters or what happened to them. I'm not even sure how it ended.
Plot summary, anyone? Lara, age 17, and her father go to Italy together to visit the father's friend who is dying. They stay at the friend's very cool villa near Siena. Lara gets involved with the son of the dissolute aristocratic English family from the very cool villa next door. Her father gets involved with one of their houseguests. The friend dies. They go back to London. Someone, please start filming this immediately.
