You, Me & Tuscany is the rare contemporary romantic comedy that’s getting a full-fledged theatrical release, rather than sticking to streaming, where the genre has experienced a revival in the 2020s. But despite going out in thousands of theaters nationwide before eventually turning up on Peacock, the Halle Bailey/Regé-Jean Page team-up feels inescapably like a post-streaming rom-com: It has two well-known faces at its center, combined in a way that seems slightly more algorithmic than chemical, flanked by a low-wattage supporting cast; it’s vaguely slick-looking but ultimately flatly shot; it’s not especially funny. And most noticeably, it’s too damn nice for its own good.
This might seem counterintuitive for a genre that is often regarded as pure comfort food, the cinematic equivalent of the Italian dishes that Brianna (Bailey) eventually cooks up at a folksy local Tuscan eatery – because of course she is a chef whose culinary education was put on pause. (In rom-com world, chefs might as well be called Girl Architects.) But in the 2020s, rom-com portion control has gotten particularly out of whack, overdosing on sugar and studio notes. These are movies that don’t trust their stars – the very reason they’re supposed to exist in the first place.
As presented in this movie, Brianna – who allows the nickname “Anna” while in Italy, presumably to sound more old-country – was an aspiring chef, cheered on by her single mom who shared her love of cooking. She moved to New York to attend culinary school, but her mother’s unexpected illness and death threw her off her game, and she dropped out a few months shy of graduation. The emotional and logistical mechanics of this are confusing – she apparently helped take care of her mom during her illness, only to give up after her death when she presumably had already paid for her semester and could have coasted through to at least get that degree, to at least achieve the thing her mother wanted most in the damn world – and, frankly, unnecessary. It’s supposed to provide a rooting interest for Anna, but that’s Halle Bailey’s job. Many audience members will presumably see this movie already familiar with her from her singing career and Disney’s Little Mermaid remake. She’s has a cute, likable presence. Yet the movie ties itself in unconvincing knots, paranoid that we won’t like Anna unless she has, at minimum, (a.) an enormous talent (b.) a big dream, and (c.) a sad backstory, even though past rom-coms have proven that audiences will like borderline psychotic monsters if they’re played by, say, Meg Ryan.
This will sound like backseat screenwriting, but bear with me: If anything, Anna should flirt with being downright disreputable. In the movie, she’s spent the time since dropping out of culinary school as a housesitter, bouncing from place to place and trying out different rich-people fantasy lives. The movie opens with her cosplaying this kind of fabulousness until her temporary employer (Nia Vardalos) arrives home early and catches Anna wearing her clothes. Ah, now this is a starting place for a rom-com. It actually is one already, called Housesitter. It’s quite charming, and though it features some light con artistry and pathological lying, it’s still rated PG and perfectly sweet-natured.
But not sweet enough for You, Me & Tuscany, which lacks the courage to simply make Anna a proper scammer. If she were, the plot would fall into place neatly: She could still meet expat Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor) at a bar; instead of him inspiring her to take an impromptu dream trip to Tuscany, where she realizes she has arrived during a hotel-crowding festival and tracks down Matteo’s empty country house out of practical desperation, she could actually go to Tuscany fully intending to pose as his fiancée and treat herself to the benefits of posing as his fiancée. Instead, Anna improbably poses in that role by accident; it’s all basically a cute misunderstanding that she feels terribly guilty about, especially as she meets Michael (Page), a Black Englishman who has been raised as part of Matteo’s family. Their attraction grows, and sure, the big lie acts as an obstacle, but mostly the dumb kind, where you wait impatiently for her to come clean. There aren’t enough jokes to keep you distracted in the meantime.
Making Anna a con artist gives her greater agency, however morally questionable, and could create a productive contrast with the honorable, straight-ahead Michael. It could also generate more farcical complications if, say, Matteo is to unexpectedly show back up at his home and go along with Anna’s lie – creating a de facto bond with the “wrong” guy instead of the right one. Instead, rather than a conniving and resourceful woman being lured into going straight by the charms of Italy and honesty, it’s about a nice person slightly too embarrassed to correct the record about what she’s doing in Tuscany.
In other words, the comforting niceness of You, Me & Tuscany denies Bailey any real sense of desire to play, and comedy is funnier when it involves some kind of desire, especially if it’s misplaced. Yes, Anna is obviously attracted to Page’s Michael, but it’s free-floating and a mild inconvenience. Generally speaking, it’s funnier and more charming for rom-com desire to be the result of some kind of energy conversion: The characters are focused on one thing, and wind up accidentally channeling that devotion into something else (each other). This more larcenous version of Anna could still be a talented chef, could still rediscover her love of cooking via a semi-zany Italian family. But it wouldn’t play so much like bland self-help. Barbara Stanwyck made multiple great romantic comedies that positioned her as a con woman (The Lady Eve) or a petty thief (Remember the Night), and she was one of the best to ever do it.
I’m not suggesting that Halle Bailey is the next Barbara Stanwyck, or has to be in order to succeed in Hollywood. But the lack of even the mildest edge (and again, screwball rom-coms and modern throwbacks I’m thinking of are not R-rated raunchfests!) affects her performance, too. Anna only intermittently relishing her deception situation means that Bailey spends a fair amount of time wearing a slightly doleful, sheepish expression on her face, muting the sense of yearning that was one of the few highlights of that Mermaid remake. There’s no struggle for Anna to preserve her dignity, and there’s not much fun to be had on either end of her extremely mild conversion from slightly lost to extremely found. Bailey is forced to step aside and let a handful of others handle the movie’s extremely mild comedy, which is partially why so many of the movie’s conversations either take place in scenes where dialogue is looped in over travelogue footage, or closer shots where the dialogue is obscured by montage music. It contributes to the feeling that the movie has been tweaked and adjusted to avoid offense it was never in danger of giving.
Though it’s made for theaters, You, Me & Tuscany seems thoroughly paranoid that its audience must be pacified (or, at minimum, lulled to sleep, when the movie can still run), rather than engaging in any unlikable behavior to inspire an abrupt switch-off. Ultimately, the movie’s ample location shooting (even its interiors were shot at a studio in Rome!) can’t have the proper transporting effect when its stars are stuck in such a cautious screenplay. It’s hard to whisk viewers away to scenic Tuscany when the movie seems to have at least one eye on the comforts of the couch.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Guardian, among others.
