One weekend equals an Italian movie three-fer

It’s Halloween, which isn’t a traditional Italian holiday but has been co-opted here to include pumpkins, scarecrows and witches (grazie, Harry Potter).

But as we sit here, hoping that no Italian kids come to our apartment door (not because we’re anti-social but because we don’t have any treats beyond a couple of peanuts and some assorted clumps of Italian chocolate), I’m thrown back to the weekend — when we trained to Cortona. Our friends Karen and Allen own a house just outside the town (and also an apartment inside the town walls).

OK, first movie reference. Cortona is the setting for “Under the Tuscan Sun,” the Diane Lane movie that was based on the nonfiction book by Frances Mayes. Not that the movie has anything whatsoever to do with the book (Lane is a movie star; Mayes, to be charitable, is not), but I remember the Cortona bookstore that, years ago, kept a copy of Mayes’ book in the front window under the sign, “The book that brought Cortona to the world.” (That was how I translated the Italian; for all I know, it might have said, “This book is a pack of vicious American lies.”)

On Saturday, though, Allen drove the five of us to Arezzo. And here’s the second movie reference: Arezzo is where Roberto Begigni filmed his Oscar-winning film “La vita e bella.” And if you didn’t know that beforehand (as I did not), the poster hung in the central piazza will inform you.

By the way, we had a great lunch at Buca di San Francesco, where the service was friendly, the mood unhurried and the final tab didn’t cause a rush for the nearest Bancomat (ATM).

Finally, on Sunday, we visited the “Celle” Hermitage, which advertises itself as a spot that housed Saint Francis during his occasional treks arcoss the Tuscan mountains and is believed to be where the holy man stayed during the final months of his life. So, third movie reference: “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” which dramatizes (and likely sanitizes) the saint’s life.

My brother-in-law says this of Italy: “Everywhere you go, it’s a freakin’ postcard.” I say, everywhere you go, it’s a freakin movie.

Below: The trailer for “La vita e bella.”