You, Me & Tuscany: Movie Review

I think I speak for everyone when I say this: we need more rom-coms! Not to make things too real and depressing, but the world is falling apart. Every day, every week, there seems to be a new tragedy, a new horrific headline in the news. At times it feels difficult, almost impossible, to find any sort of solace amongst all the pain and suffering. Rom-coms have the power to do that for me. They're the best kind of movies to throw on when I need a pick-me-up, the best kind of movies to press play on and disconnect from the atrocities of the world for a couple of hours.

This one was nothing short of a delight.

You, Me & Tuscany is a dreamy, wholesome romance set in sunny Italy during the summer. The director, Kat Coiro, is the same person behind another rom-com that I really liked: Marry Me, which was released in 2022 and starred Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. In this film, Kat chose the charismatic duo of Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page to play the beautiful couple at the heart of the movie.

The story is quite closely inspired by the 1995 rom-com While You Were Sleeping. In You, Me & Tuscany, we're introduced to our protagonist, Anna (Halle Bailey), an aspiring chef who was forced to put her dreams to the side after the death of her mother. Now working as a house sitter in New York and struggling to make ends meet, Anna meets Matteo, a handsome italian man who tells her about his life and his gorgeous villa back in Tuscany.

Deciding to follow her dreams, Anna impulsively buys a one-way flight ticket to Tuscany. Upon arriving in Italy, she discovers that every hotel room in the city is booked due to the summer festival. Remembering Matteo's mention of his empty villa, she manages to track it down and lets herself in using the spare key hidden beneath the flower pots.

The next morning, she's woken up by Matteo's opera-singing eccentric neighbour. Snooping around the villa, she finds an engagement ring in a drawer and slips it on her finger, before she's abruptly interruped by Matteo's mother and grandmother. After getting caught by them, Anna pretends to be Matteo's fiancee in order to avoid getting arrested.

Matteo's family warm up to her and quickly accept her into their life. She meets the rest of his relatives, including Michael (Regé-Jean Page), Matteo's brother. The two of them develop a mutual attraction for each other, leaving Anna in a tricky situation: pretending to be someone's fiancee whilst falling for his brother.

Set on the backdrop of beautiful Italy, this film truly feels like sunshine in a bottle. It's the kind of film that makes you want to book a one-way trip to Tuscany, find a handsome man to fall in love and drink homemade wine with, and it's all down to Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page having great chemistry and making their love story believable.

It's also great to see a rom-com lead by two Black actors. Throughout the years, many people in the movie industry have spoken about how difficult it is to get funding and support from studios for romantic films starring two Black leads. Even in this day and age, that's still the case. Whenever you watch a rom-com with a Black actor in a leading role, they're almost always paired with a white co-star. And whilst there's nothing wrong with that, it's nice, for a change, to see a story that puts a Black couple at the center and allows their relationship to take the spotlight.

Throw this movie on if you're looking for something that will leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. With temperatures rising and summer just around the corner, I can't think of a better movie to get lost in right now.