You, Me & Tuscany: Halle Bailey Is a Tuscan Raider in This Predictably Charming Rom-com

By Chris Knight

Rating: C+

Based on the trailers and what little I knew of the rom-com You, Me & Tuscany, the biggest question going in was: How many glasses of white wine would ideally be consumed during its hour-and-45-minute runtime?

And would they be actively enjoyed, or merely required to make it through the movie with sanity intact?

Coming out the other side, I would say: Two. And, to quote the character played by Halle Bailey: “A beer. Any kind.”

It’s a simple premise. (Pouring you a glass.) Bailey stars as Brianna “Anna” Celeste Montgomery, New York’s worst housesitter. She likes to immerse herself in the job, which means when one woman comes home from a trip early, she finds Anna wearing her clothes. Skivvies too. “I was gonna wash ’em,” Anna explains sheepishly.

Nursing a bruised ego (and that beer), Anna runs into Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), scion of an Italian family and running from the idea of running the family restaurant. Anna, as the film tells us at least 17 times, is an almost-chef who dropped out of school after her mom died.

She takes a trip to Tuscany (because title) only to find nowhere to stay in Pienza, an almost impossibly charming hillside Medieval town. Ah, but Matteo had mentioned an empty villa. She finds it and moves in, because what’s the difference between housesitting and house-squatting, when you get down to it?

Second glass. Nurse this one! Matteo’s family discovers the interloper, quickly mistakes her for his fiancée (because plot) and welcomes her into the family.

But with Matteo still away, Anna finds herself falling for his comely cousin Michael, played by Bridgerton hottie Rége-Jean Page.

Now, you may wonder how a Brit like Page manages to play a convincing Italian. Fact is, he doesn’t, any more than Emma Stone was a persuasive Hawaiian in 2015’s Aloha. But if you’re far enough into that second glass you’ll buy it, meandering accent be damned.

You, Me & Tuscany quickly settles into a triumvirate of cooking porn, dining porn, and wine porn. Not much of the other sort — the closest director Kat Coiro comes is some tastefully framed décolletage on the Little Mermaid star, and a few shirtless moments from the Duke of Hastings, which causes a flustered Anna to tell a friend back home that he has a six — no, an EIGHT-pack.

The film also deals out most of the clichés of the genre. Matteo’s family includes a randy plus-sized gal and an endlessly suspicious grandma. All the cars are either $300,000 Maseratis or €39-a-month Fiats.

And there’s a new song on the soundtrack: “Live, Love, Learn” by Britain’s Estelle. Though it’s a little jarring in a movie that also makes due with “ambient bar Musak” in at least one scene.

You, Me & Tuscany is not, for the record, a remake of the 2006 rom-com You, Me and Dupree, though both feature an unwelcome house guest. Neither is it 2010’s Eat Pray Love without the praying, even if that “Live, Love, Learn” song title suggests a kinship.

Rather, it’s your typical mistaken-identity love story, in which one pretty person must decide between two pretty people, with the choice heavily influenced by who looks best when wet.

You’re going to need that beer.

You, Me & Tuscany. Directed by Kat Coiro. Starring Halle Bailey, Rége-Jean Page, and Lorenzo de Moor. In theatres April 10.