May 14, 1999
Web posted at: 3:49 p.m. EDT (1949 GMT)

From Bill Tush
CNN Entertainment News Correspondent

NEW YORK (CNN) -- "Tea with Mussolini" derives from the memoirs of its director, Franco Zeffirelli. It follows several eccentric English women who help raise an abandoned boy in Italy, during the years leading up to World War II.

Joan Plowright joins Oscar winners Dame Judi Dench and Maggie Smith to play the offbeat surrogate mothers to young Luca Innocenti. He's been born out of wedlock and isn't officially recognized by his father.

The ladies enliven the Florence, Italy of the '30s with a wit so biting they're called the Scorpioni.

"They are in love with Florence, with its artistic heritage," says Plowright. "And they become involved in the drama of a small boy who is illegitimate and abandoned by his father and whose mother is dead. They take him under their wing and give him an education he would never have had."

Then, the Fascists come to power. Everyone's life is changed.

"These ladies are interned as enemy aliens, which they don't take kindly to at all," Plowright says. Quoting Zeffirelli, she calls the movie "a story of civil disobedience."

Author and director Zeffirelli describes his and co-author John Mortimer's coming-of-age tale as "semi-autobiographical."

"Well it's experiences that are collected," he says. "Some are absolutely correct. Others are things I heard happening to somebody else. It's a big minestrone."

Cher plays a free-spirited, Jewish-American art collector who also helps raise Luca.

During the filming, she was waiting for her big comeback. She got it, with the dance hit "Believe." That was enough to impress Plowright's 10-year-old grandson.

"He came out just before the premiere with his friends and said, 'Did you have a scene with Cher?' I said, 'I had three or four scenes with Cher.' He turned to his friends and said, 'She's acted with Cher.' And they all looked at me with new respect."

Cher did her best to earn the respect of Plowright, Dench and Smith.

Zeffirelli says she did a serious job because she was "frightened to death" to act with these theatrical veterans, who've performed together for 30 years.

But they made sure they didn't exclude her.

After all, Plowright acknowledges, she might have been intimidated by Smith and Dench too, had they not been friends for so long. "We're friends. We've acted together. We've been part of the same scene.... Now the ones I'm intimidated by are dead."