We last saw Halle Bailey in 2023’s Little Mermaid remake, where she managed to bring a surprising dollop of charm to her take on Princess Ariel.
Given that good performance, I went into You, Me & Tuscany with a little suspicion that it might manage to shake out into something better than its poster and premise would have you believe. It’s a Hallmark movie in everything but its name, really – the tale of a lost (in every sense) twenty-something landing in a whole new town and falling head over heels into a burgeoning love affair with the local heartthrob on day one – but the handsome hunk starring opposite Bailey is Bridgerton’s own Regé-Jean Page, who also has a magnetic capacity as a performer. Here, he’s swapped out his Dukedom and scaled things back – instead, he’s only mildly rich, with nothing but a Tuscan vineyard and bougie line of wines to his name. Break out your sad violins and operatic pity parties for our main man Michael.
‘You pretended to be the white Italian man’s fiancé but ended up catchin’ feelings for the black Italian cousin brother?’
I say main man, but there’s a wrinkle in the life of our young protagonist Anna in the form of Michael’s cousin, Matteo, who, while trying to woo her in New York, lets slip that he’s got an incredibly luxurious villa just sitting empty, awaiting his return back in Italy. While we as the audience are left a little baffled by the man’s trust in an absolute stranger, Anna takes it upon herself to fly out to Italy (with a pre-paid plane ticket given to her by her late mother – who else?) and live in the lap of luxury while Matteo’s away galavanting across America and, probably, dishing out the three digits on the back of his credit card to any lady who bats her eyes at him. It’s a hefty set-up to get everyone where they need to be, but any viewer too confused can rely on the simple elevator pitch of the film’s near-perfectly cheesy tagline: ‘She came for the pasta and got lost in the sauce’.
Once the stage is set, the second act moves with a breathless efficiency reminiscent of one of Michael’s many Swiss watches, stacking up tropes of the genre like dominoes. The close-knit Italian community? Check. The annual traditional festival where everyone needs a dance partner? Naturally. The lifelong dream pushed aside by exterior circumstances now in need of revitalising? Absolutely. It’s predictable fare, and the booze-related element brought to mind last month’s Mother’s Pride, but whereas that film had a sickly sweet, stomach-churning feel running through it, this manages to rise above that, helped greatly by John Debney’s score, which brings a much-needed sense of exoticism and fun to the Tuscan setting. The sun-soaked location photography has a charm, too, even if Michael and Matteo’s quirky family leave something to be desired (one woman’s only trait seems to be that she’s having a giddy little affair with a plumber, which got annoying early on and stayed that way til the very end).
As annoying side contributions go, Anna’s best friend Claire stands head and shoulders above the rest, quipping constantly all the way from New York. The wisecracking sassy black best friend is a trope I manage to forget about for periods of time (to the current climate’s credit, those periods feel longer and longer, which lets me know that the caricature is slowly being phased out in favour of, I don’t know, actual representation) but occasionally, you bet it still raises its head, mmm mmm mmm. A white man wrote this script and I could tell that well ahead of time. Luckily, she’s not brought along for the ride to Italy, instead staying home to await labour and chime in with snappy voicemails and catchphrases, but I gritted my teeth nonetheless.
The film’s at its best when it sticks close to its central dynamic, playing into the flirtatious tension between Anna and Michael. As the pair grew closer and began talking about their aspirations and dreams, I felt genuinely connected with the romance. The pair are good performers, with Page turning the charm up to eleven to distract us in the stalls from asking too many questions when he turns inward and worries about dying alone (yes, he looks like a movie star, drives that car and lives in a villa with an entire vineyard and brand to his name…I don’t know how any woman could ever want him). The narrative is a little too convoluted, though, which draws attention away from the most interesting parts of the story, swapping steaminess for dalliances with brotherly adversity and a distractingly unnecessary barrel rolling contest (not in planes, sadly – it’s far more literal than that). As with this sort of movie, there’s also the last-minute reappearance of the problematic ex-fiancé to deal with (a trope which, alongside Ready or Not 2, is currently having something of a comeback in the cinema) to muddy things further – we didn’t need her here, she’s just another element taking up time and attention.
In short, the film never truly lives up to the fantastic tagline which will live in romcom infamy (at least in my mind) for some time. It’s fun and distracting enough at points, but it felt like a longer getaway than I was expecting it to for having a fairly short runtime and it’s got more going on than it needs to. The main plot takes a backseat for certain stretches of time and a fair few of the jokes don’t land in the way they ought to, despite the two stars bringing a nice bit of chemistry to the screen. One of the stronger two stars of recent months – certainly more than Mother’s Pride – but not something I’d recommend you rush out to see unless you’re really willing to get lost in the sauce of this Hallmark genre outing.
BBFC: Rated 12A for infrequent strong language, moderate sex references.
You, Me & Tuscany is in cinemas now.
