As comforting as a warm platter of pasta, You, Me & Tuscany welcomes the return of the predictable, low-stakes romantic comedy to theaters. Director Kat Coiro and writer Ryan Engle’s film is the sort of movie that nowadays is typically relegated to straight-to-streaming— so much so that when I first glimpsed its poster, featuring its two leads smoldering at each other across the glowing Italian countryside, I automatically assumed it was a Netflix Original, and was shocked to learn otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s little remarkable about You, Me & Tuscany, which, with its sun-kissed landscapes, easygoing (if largely sexless) chemistry between its attractive young actors, and frivolous, too-easily-resolved conflicts, is the cinematic equivalent of a dinner at Olive Garden. But there’s nothing wrong with indulging in a little junk every so often, especially when it’s elevated by the presence of an effervescent personality like Halle Bailey. She plays Anna, a Manhattan-based aspiring chef who, in the film’s cutesy bait-and-switch opening, we first see living the high life: wearing designer clothes, shopping with her little dog, living in a swanky apartment. As fast as you can order an overpriced latte, the illusion of wealth and success explodes, when Anna returns home to find Mrs. Dunn (played by Nia Vardalos, in a fun nod to contemporary rom-com royalty)— the owner of the clothes and the dog and the apartment that Anna has taken over— waiting for her. Anna was merely house-sitting for Mrs. Dunn, and now that’s she’s been fired from that job, she has no place to go and nothing to her name except $500 or so in her bank account and a plane ticket to Tuscany that her mother purchased for them to take a trip before she passed away the previous year. While waiting to charge her phone at the hotel bar where her friend Claire (Aziza Scott) works, she meets Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), a charming Italian man who encourages her to go ahead and take that trip…and entices her with photos of the Tuscan villa he left vacant when he fled his familial obligations in search of a different life in America.
From there, You, Me & Tuscany turns into a long string of absurd scenarios that increasingly strain credulity. In the span of a few days, Anna travels to Tuscany without making any reservations, fails to find any vacant rooms, decides that Matteo basically invited her anyway and breaks into his villa, is found out by his family and mistaken for his fiancée, and quickly finds herself falling for his initially abrasive but ultimately soft vineyard-owner brother Michael (Regé-Jean Page). It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t need to. This is a fantasy, after all, a sort of wish fulfillment for those who are so mired in grief and the hopelessness of leading a life that doesn’t feel worth living that running away to another country, immediately being welcomed as family, rediscovering the joy in your craft, and falling in love— all while spending the days eating incredible food and tasting wines— would be a life-altering dream come true. Ultimately, even the script’s attempts to be self-aware (Anna and Claire’s text conversations and voicemails acknowledge the ridiculousness of the situation she’s gotten herself in to) are subsumed by the illusion of paradise.
Even illusions need to have at least some meat to them, though. Everything in You, Me & Tuscany occurs at such rapid-fire speed— whether it’s Anna winning over Matteo’s curmudgeonly family, or her tale flirtations with Michael that quickly turn into something more— that you never get a chance to really sit with the characters’ feelings. That includes the finale, in which all is forgiven with seemingly little to no hurt or consequence, but also Anna’s lingering grief over the loss of her mother and her subsequent inability to cook, and the rift that formed between Matteo and his family (especially his father, who wanted him to take over the family restaurant). Like Coiro’s 2022 J-Lo/Owen Wilson Notting Hill riff Marry Me, it’s perhaps a little too indebted to its superior influences to bother doing too much legwork (here, Under the Tuscan Sun and While You Were Sleeping come to mind). Fortunately, Bailey’s expressive face and enthusiastic commitment to every scene fills in a lot of the gaps. She’s aided by a delightful supporting cast, which includes the cab driver, Lorenzo (Marco Calvoni), who fast becomes her friend and confidante, Michael and Matteo’s stoic nonna (Stefania Cassini), and Matteo’s doting, nuptials-obsessed mother Gabriella (Isabella Ferrari). They help make You, Me & Tuscany, if not a cinematic love story for the ages, at least a diverting, two-hour escape.
You, Me & Tuscany is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 105 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Katie at the Movies 