Joel on Film

A film like You, Me & Tuscany relies entirely upon the members of its ensemble: For proof of that, here is the utterly charming Halle Bailey as Anna, a young and once-aspiring sous chef living in New York City, who gets herself into quite the silly pickle. Ryan Engle’s screenplay, though, neither shies away from the silliness of her situation nor treats its audience like idiots for falling under its spell. The gist of the plot here is that Anna, seeking a way to get away from a recent period of grief and drudgery, sets up camp in a half-abandoned Italian villa, only to be confused for a handsome man’s new fiancée.

Anna doesn’t do this out of spite or with malicious intent, and although the film is headed inexorably toward the scene where she will have to confess the truth to those most closely affected by the little white lie, it must be said that director Kat Coiro keeps things light here. It’s all in the key of an old-fashioned screwball comedy, based in a contrived misunderstanding and plotted by way of unadulterated contrivance. The pleasant surprise, though, is that the movie features actors who, more or less, take the whole thing just seriously enough to sell it.

We even come to understand the reason that Anna, in spite of a reality check from her best friend Claire (a hilarious Aziza Scott), might think it’s a good idea to break into her new crush’s family home: A year after her mother (played in flashback and photographic images by Joy Bryant) passed away from a nonspecific illness—the deadliest kind in the movies, truly—Anna finds herself quite unable to pick up the pan and the spatula to start cooking again, having dropped out of culinary arts school just two months before graduation. She barely has any money in her savings account, but then, she meets Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor). He’s handsome and charming enough to take her mind off things for a while, but he just had to bring up that villa.

This is when the borderline-slapstick complications begin, as Anna arrives just in time for a summer festival that eliminates all other options for finding a room, catches a ride from the sympathetic cab driver Lorenzo (a very funny Marco Calvani), sneaks her way into the residence, and finds an engagement ring in a chest of drawers—which, unable to help herself, she tries on for effect. Obviously, she’s still wearing it when Matteo’s mother Gabriella (Isabella Ferrari) and grandmother Alessia (Stefania Casini) arrive to do some housekeeping. The misunderstanding leads them to believe that Matteo is newly engaged.

Ferrari and Casini, by the way, are Italian acting legends, which means that the ability to sell this material is likely, at this point, automatic. Casini is hilarious as the feisty and suspicious Nonna, who clearly understands right from the start what’s going on here. Gabriella is slower on the uptake, although she might also have her reasons to want to believe the illusion.

Crucially, the movie humanizes these characters—the main ones, anyway, to include Matteo upon his bemused return—before throwing them into the deep end of the film’s admittedly melodramatic developments. Matteo, who was meant to take over as his father Vincenzo’s heir apparent to a local dining empire, ran away to America to avoid the pressure. His cousin Michael (Regé-Jean Page) took the reins when that happened, and there’s even a bit of bad blood there, as the result of a family tragedy that placed Michael in Vincenzo and Gabriella’s care.

The heartsore quality of the characters’ backgrounds means that Engle and Coiro, as well as the actors playing these roles, are able to dig a little bit deeper to find that all-important humanity. Admittedly, it isn’t much in the way of actual effort, especially as the action turns toward a love triangle. Even that, though, is mostly internalized for Anna, and the conflict between Matteo and Michael as part of that triangle is more about themselves, each other and the family legacy.

It’s all quite predictable how the movie will turn out, which is to say that You, Me & Tuscany is not the movie to watch for any major surprises or twists. There’s comfort in the right kind of easily watchable entertainment, though, and because it features actors who know instinctively how to play this material, it goes down as easy as a home-cooked meal.

Rating: *** (out of ****)