You, Me and Tuscany—a movie about a young woman’s romantic adventure in a foreign land—is the kind of romantic comedy that gets made four or five times a year these days, except it almost always goes directly to Netflix, usually starring actress Sofia Carson. The rare film of this type to get a big-screen release is charming, one in which the spirit of Nancy Meyers is strong: the people are gorgeous, as are the locations, the houses and the food. There’s not much realism, but I’ll let that slide.
You, Me and Tuscany was directed by Kat Coiro, who made the Jennifer Lopez rom-com Marry Me and TV shows, and was written by Ryan Engle. Halle Bailey (from the live-action Little Mermaid) plays Anna, a young woman who lives in New York as a professional house-sitter.
Forced to drop out of culinary school when her since-deceased mother got sick, she’s short of prospects, until one night in a hotel bar she meets Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), an Italian man who tells her everything she needs to set the plot in motion: He’s from a small town in Tuscany, he resisted his family’s plan for him to take over their restaurant to instead travel the world as a real estate investor, and he owns a Tuscan villa that’s sitting empty.
Anna, nearly broke, heads to Tuscany and squats at the villa. Through a series of misunderstandings and outright lies, she’s mistaken for Matteo’s never-before-mentioned fiancée. That large family, entirely Italians played by Italian actors, also includes Michael (former Bridgerton leading man Regé-Jean Page), an orphan cousin who was adopted into the Italian family, Tom Hagen-style.
You, Me and Tuscany borrows the entire plot of While You Were Sleeping: A woman’s lying to a man’s family about being the absent man’s fiancée, while simultaneously charming that family and falling into a flirtation with the man’s brother. While You Were Sleeping established that Sandra Bullock’s parents were dead, and that she was therefore missing out on the love of a large family.
In both movies, the biggest test of the plot is whether the woman is charming enough that the characters can forgive her for propagating that lie. You, Me and Tuscany, like the Bullock film, passes that test.
Nothing that happens in You, Me and Tuscany is a surprise. The poster’s a spoiler in terms of the ultimate romantic pairing, and it’s not shocking that Anna gets back her love of cooking. The amount of money Anna has saved up, in real life, would last maybe 48 hours in Italy.
The film is likely relying on the power of Bridgerton fans who miss seeing Rege-Jean Page, although compared to that show and its sex scenes, Tuscany is comparatively chaste. And those who thought The Drama didn’t do enough to address the racial implications of Zendaya’s character might scratch their heads that this entire large Italian family hasn’t even a hint of any negative reactions to their son having a Black fiancée.
None of that really bothered me. The romantic chemistry is off the charts, the family is charming, and there are two first-rate comic relief characters, one played by Aziza Scott and the other by Marco Calvani. You, Me, and Tuscany might have what it takes to revive the theatrical romantic comedy.