Villa Lena
Preface
The following story is based on a true experience, which took place at Villa Lena, a hotel, organic farm, winery, and artists residency set in the cypress-spotted hills of Tuscany. Here, the three owners, each with arts backgrounds of their own—a chic art consultant, a soulful musician, and a dynamic nightclub owner—invite a group of artists, designers, film directors, writers, and musicians to stay for a month or two each year. In essence, Villa Lena is the ultimate destination for the trendy bohemian crowd, seeking a holiday that blends rustic charm with nightlife flair. According to a review in a Spanish magazine, if you are a lover of Luca Guadagnino’s films (I Am Love, Call Me By Your Name, A Bigger Splash), Villa Lena is the ideal location to immerse yourself in the scenery and style of his cinematic plots.
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It was Miss Emotion who invited Mr. Sunset for a holiday in Tuscany. The ‘Mr. Sunset’ in question, despite his pseudonym, does not feel like he is remotely near the ‘sunset’ era of his life. He is not yet sixty years old and rather feels like the sun is only just rising—it’s true, at the time, in 2018, anything younger than sixty is still considered ‘young’ for an artist…
Every once in a while, in the morning, Mr. Sunset experiences a ‘sunrise’ of his own, enacting the title of Ernest Hemingway’s famous book: The Sun Also Rises. This in itself is certainly a cause for celebration by Mr. Sunset, a definite achievement when you find yourself on the other side of 50.
Before he embarked on his trip to Tuscany, it was concerning for Sunset that his personal player may not strike at a crucial moment, and he wondered if Miss Emotion would perhaps be disappointed if she sensed that all his glory had passed.
What he did not know was that Miss Emotion would be far from disappointed, for she did not expect the Sunset to be at the peak of his prime. In her waning youth, she had come to appreciate sentimental men in later life, for they still possessed a certain glory and obvious maturity, but also a nostalgic understanding of life, which appealed to her more emotional, contemplative side.
However, aside from her slightly romanticised preconceptions, what Miss Emotion didn’t expect was that Mr. Sunset, whose artistic career had once again reached new heights, was rather quiet over the first few days in Tuscany, which was strikingly different from his usual boasting. Other than occasionally splashing watercolours and copying the idyllic scenery of the sun, Mr. Sunset could otherwise be found lying naked by the pool with his beer belly. This was perhaps a slightly off-putting sight to the tourists and those in the creative industries from all over the world who came to this countryside villa.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
“Are you xxx? I met you two years ago at the opening of your London solo show!” Mr. Sunset is recognised by the bartender when he went to the poolside bar to order a beer after his swim. With his stomach glistening in the sun and drops of water dripping from his trunks, the Sunset was restraining the surprise in his facial expression. “How could I be recognised now, when I’ve run away to Tuscany?” Mr. Sunset was both surprised and amused.
The bartender, who speaks fluent English, doesn’t sound like a Tuscan country boy either—he says he’s been living in London for the past few years, and his ex-girlfriend happens to work at the gallery where Mr. Sunset had a solo show two years ago. He happened to be there for the opening of the show and had a 30-second chat with Sunset. The Sunset began to learn that most of the staff at the villa hotel had been ‘involved’ in London’s creative industries and had done well. For example, the restaurant manager had been the membership manager of the Groucho Club, a club frequented by London’s biggest artists, and the founder of Villa Lena was an art consultant who had worked at the Pace Gallery.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
The Sunset knew that he had come all the way to Tuscany to escape—and also potentially to undertake a romantic fling with Miss Emotion—but expected that Miss Emotion chose Villa Lena because it was a place frequented by their usual circle.
This 500-hectare countryside hotel is set in Tuscany’s idyllic old-growth forest, surrounded by cypress trees, an hour’s drive from Florence and Pisa. The location is somewhat isolated, standing away from any of the local villages, instead providing all you could ever need from within its walls—most crucially housing a winery in its expansive grounds. Like most hotels in Tuscany, Villa Lena produces its own wine and spa products and has its own organic farm. However, what sets it apart from the rest is that it has its own music album… The hotel’s co-founder, Jerome Hadey, husband of Lena Evstafieva (who the villa was named after), is a musician and has just released an album called Not For Money, Only for Love. Lena’s other business partner, former international party boy and a regular jet-setter between Paris to Miami to Shanghai, Lionel Bensemoun, is the director of the nightclub brand Le Baron. Ultimately, the difference between Villa Lena and other hotels in the area is that it attracts a younger, trendier clientele, the ‘inner circle’ and more in the know about the latest international trends.
Another special feature of the hotel is the artist residency programme. Every summer, Lena and her husband Jerome invite an incredible array of the brightest and best in the arts to provide them with a creative environment and occasionally a chef-in-residence to create special dishes. At the end of their residency, the artists leave a piece of their work with the villa in exchange for a gift.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
It was for this reason that Miss Emotion decided on Villa Lena. She was feeling at a particularly low point in her life, and now more than ever wanted to escape to a place filled with wonderful people and become totally immersed in art… a place where one could never be isolated. One day, she got a newsletter in her inbox about Jerome’s new album and learnt that there was a place like Villa Lena in Tuscany, Italy, where she could relax away from the hustle and bustle of life and meet new people and socialise properly.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
At Villa Lena, the resident artists live in a brick and pink 19th-century villa, and guests stay in a farmhouse spread across the mountains. A 15-20 minute walk from the main villa and San Michele, where the main restaurant and pool are located, is the studio.
Because of Villa Lena’s remote location and the difficulty of getting around without a car, Miss Emotion spent a whole week effectively back at boarding school, but this time encountering much less boredom.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
Villa Lena offers a number of classes with resident artists, where guests can learn to make clay with a ceramic artist, paint with a painter, pick fresh vegetables from the garden with the chef, make pasta with the bartender, and have BBQ lunches and pizza nights on the weekends. There are pool parties every day, and after midnight, the young people yearning for more go to the musicians’ music studio after-party.
Of course, the ‘boarding school’ is a small place and everything exists within a circle, so there is no shortage of gossip. The resident artists looked at Miss Emotion and Mr. Sunset and wondered if they were a couple. Neither of them had rings on their hands. They weren’t even close. So are they really just friends? It’s not often that ordinary friends of the opposite sex go on holiday together in the secluded Tuscan countryside.
Villa Lena
Before coming here, Miss Emotion had done a little bit of research and knew that Villa Lena was very social and so was Mr. Sunset, so there was no problem at all. He didn’t want to meet anyone from the art world, and the bohemian vibe here was far from his idea of a trip to Tuscany. Still, that wouldn’t stop him from stirring his own ‘sunrise’. On his first day at Villa Lena, he told Miss Emotion with confidence: “Seven days here… sex is definitely on the cards, it’s just a question of whether it’s sooner rather than later.”
“Oh… No, I absolutely have no intention of doing that.” Miss Emotion was straightforward. She used her body language from day one to send the message “I have no intention of doing that” to Mr. Sunset. During the day, while Sunset laid by the pool and tanned his belly, Miss Emotion wrote her proposal for an exhibition in Villa Lena’s restaurant; when they sat down to dinner together, Miss Emotion gazed out at the Tuscan sunset and avoided partaking in her natural manner of winking in an attempt to prevent sending Mr. Sunset the wrong kind of “wink”.
Of course, she wanted to talk to Mr. Sunset about art, the art world, and how to succeed in the art business. He, on the other hand, did not want to talk about it, and claims he doesn’t know it. He sees his success as a coincidence, even if he thinks it’s inexplicable. Whenever the sun sets below the horizon of the Tuscan hills, Sunset thinks about what it would be like if he could always have his personal sunrise each morning.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
During her days in the Tuscan hills, Miss Emotion enjoyed a slow life. She felt the warmth of the sun on her skin during her morning run, took off her usual high heels and replaced them with flip-flops, experiencing the simplicity of walking on the stone paths in the hills, observing the details of the dew on the grass and the flying insects on the flowers, the simple beauty of life. But even so, she was not totally relaxed and could feel something unspoken churning in her stomach, which she knew was anxiety.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
Miss Emotion and Mr. Sunset had formed their own circle of friends at Villa Lena. Rather than the Sunset’s clique, Miss Emotion preferred to hang out with other tourists and the resident artists who live at Villa Lena. Over lunch, Miss Emotion met the girl who had just been her stay and worked as a journalist for an art magazine. A fascinating job in the golden age of paper, now replaced by digital-savvy kids. “Who still reads art magazines when everyone learns what’s happening on social media?” Miss Emotion thinks to herself. She later encountered Teddy, a good friend of a resident musician, who is now living in Milan and working as a creative director for a hipster brand. Miss Emotion found out that the two had many friends in common in the London art scene. Later, the Sunset also made older ‘cigar friends’ at Villa Lena.
The next evening, as Villa Lena’s guests and resident artists gathered for their usual after-dinner drinks party by the pool, Miss Emotion saw the Sunset smoking a cigar and flirting with a female visitor, saying: “I came to Tuscany to pick her up. If she doesn’t want to, I’ll pick you up.” Most of the responses were polite: “You are so funny!” “Hahah! You must be kidding!”
On the fourth night, the Sunset also found a potential participant to aid his sunrise, a female Scandinavian tourist who was new to Tuscany and who, under the moonlight and the blurred gaze of a slightly drunken man, did not notice Sunset’s rough beard but caught the still-handsome corner of his eye and said, “Let’s go to your room. Let’s go back to your room.”
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
It was about a kilometre up the unlit hill from the pool to the farmhouse apartment where The Sunset lived. “Be careful, don’t slip and fall.” The Sunset clumsily walked towards his ‘sunrise’ with the Scandinavian girl on his arm, not realising that he would be hung out to dry.
Miss Emotion was out late that night. She went to the music studio and listened to Teddy and his group improvise and rap to the music, thinking that this was still new to her, wondering if she had lived her life in a bubble, and that the days and nights spent in Tuscany didn’t really relieve her anxiety but opened her eyes to the idea that it was good to slow down and try things she hadn’t done before.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
Having had too much to drink the night before, Miss Emotion, who hadn’t rested well, remained irritable the next day. Her daily anxiety was showing in the adult acne on her face from the hormonal imbalance and in her mood which heightened when the Sunset did not respond to her conversation.
That afternoon, Miss Emotion went to a film screening of Villa Lena’s resident film director Rodney Evans, from the United States, who was diagnosed as visually impaired at a young age, with his vision limited to a circle of almost one centimetre in diameter, which gets smaller and smaller as he gets older until he becomes completely blind. While this would have been a fatal blow to any other film director, Rodney did not give up on his artistic ambitions. In the past, he has managed to make several films that have been well received through his unique interaction with his film crew and actors. This summer at Villa Lena, he completed the final edit of his latest film Vision Portraits, a semi-autobiographical documentary. In this film, Rodney Evans follows several artists, dancers, and writers who, like him, are visually impaired and share their personal journeys and relentless pursuit of their art.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
As Miss Emotion watched the film and gulped down a cold beer, she was overwhelmed by her emotions. As soon as the film finished, she ran to the pool to talk to Mr. Sunset—who was lying, prostrate in his usual position—about her feelings. She could not see whether the Sunset’s eyes were open or closed under his sunglasses, whether he was listening to her or not. All she could see was his beer belly bulging as he breathed, his mouth slightly open, and a small drop of saliva dripping from it. Only after Miss Emotion had finished pouring out her feelings did she realise that the Sunset was sleeping in the bright sun and that the cascade of emotion she had spat out had merely evaporated into the air. Upset—of course she was. The anger fizzled in her until dinner when she finally exploded.
The sun went down as usual, and when Miss Emotion tried to talk to the Sunset about art, Sunset stammered, focusing on the plate of pasta in front of him. “If I don’t do something soon, I’ll be past my prime time.” Miss Emotion said. The Sunset raised his head, looked straight at Miss Emotion and slowly stammered out two words, “Stupid. C***.” Although Miss Emotion knew in her heart that Sunset did not mean to provoke, that it was just his personality, she failed to restrain the emotions that had been building up for days and spontaneously ignited a fiery temper: “WTF!” The table banged, plates trembled, glasses shattered, and the eyes of the rest of the restaurant were directed at them.
“You are full of f***ing bullshit!” Miss Emotion knew that this would definitely be the talk of the resident artists the next day but couldn’t contain herself and let loose at Sunset. Sunset looked confused: “I…. I’m not…. I’m just kidding.” Although in a fit of anger, Miss Emotion unearthed all the faults of Mr. Sunset, she knew that her outburst was not entirely due to his attitude, but more because of her own anxiety. Had he never experienced the confusion of youth? Was he lucky to have made his name at all? Why was he so reluctant to share his experiences with young people? At his age? The Sunset had no choice but to get up and leave the restaurant, and Miss Emotion took a couple of deep breaths and asked the waiter for a glass of rosé from Villa Lena.
That night, Miss Emotion went to the music studio to have an after-party with the artists, wondering if it was a bad idea to go on a rampage, and if Sunset had done nothing wrong.
The next morning, Miss Emotion came out of her room to see Sunset packing his bags, saying that it was actually a good idea for her to go on a rampage, as he had to leave anyway. When he left, Sunset gave Miss Emotion a warm old friend hug, and Miss Emotion felt that Sunset was in fact a cultured and warm “gangster” with a lot of integrity at heart.
She makes new friends, parties by the pool every night, drinks and chats with visitors to the resort, and is indeed happier than with Sunset, as she doesn’t have to talk about her anxieties in front of strangers. On her last night at Villa Lena, she met Jacques, a friend of the owner Jerome’s, over dinner, and the boys, who had grown up together and now live all over the world, return to Villa Lena every summer for a few days of pure manhood. Jacques said he wanted his son to realise from an early age how small we are in the universe, “We are just nothing among nothing.”
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
That night Miss Emotion told him about her trip to Tuscany with the Sunset and confessed that she had been incredibly anxious for quite some time. “With all due respect, I’ve lived in China for 10 years, and you know what I’ve found to be your problem? Chinese people are too resigned to mediocrity and too eager to succeed. You know no matter who it is and what they’ve done, in the end, it’s just nothing among nothing.”
Miss Emotion thought to herself, “That’s right. Mr. Sunset had come to Tuscany, and apart from trying to hit on her, what he wanted was to quietly relax under the bright Tuscan sun and return to the ordinary.” She and Mr. Sunset were at odds because they were at different stages of their lives. In the universe, people are small after all. Sunrise and sunset are natural laws, and even the brightest sun has to set sometime. But Miss Emotion is still chasing the rising sun.
On her last night at Villa Lena, a resident artist took Miss Emotion to the roof of the villa to look at the stars. From the rooftop of the old 19th-century house, she could spy the young artists drinking and playing pool in the villa’s function room—which they had done around the clock for the entirety of their stay. Looking out at the lights of the Tuscan countryside in the distance, and looking up at a sea of stars, Miss Emotion felt like a scene from a storybook she read as a child, a déjà vu. “We are just nothing among nothing”, she remembered Jacques’ words, but at the same time was grateful for what she had experienced during her week in Villa Lena—it was almost pure fiction.
Villa Lena – Image source: Instagram
The next morning, Miss Emotion sent a message to Mr. Sunset asking if he was well. She also apologised to him, saying that he was such a decent, nice guy who didn’t lay a hand on her despite his rogue mouth—the message was a bit long. The Sunset looked at the words “decent” and “misunderstanding” and thought to himself, “The girl really thinks too much, I’m just…. I’m just… not feeling ‘up’ to it.”
“We will always have Villa Lena.” replied the Sunset. At his age, he wasn’t going to take the fact that Miss Emotion had snapped at him in public to heart. In his mind, all he could think about was hoping that the sun—and his personal sunrise—would still be rising in Tuscany next year or the year after.
-the end-
Text: Luning
Copyediting: Rosie