“YOU, ME & TUSCANY” MAKES A STRONG CASE FOR MORE CUTESY, CHEESY BLACK ROM-COMS

There are movies that understand the assignment, and then there are movies that are the assignment: sun-drenched, emotionally legible, gently aspirational, and just self-aware enough to wink at you while pouring another glass of Chianti. You, Me, & Tuscany sits firmly in the latter camp as a fumbling yet fun romantic comedy where the rolling hills of the Italian countryside look almost unreal and the premise feels familiar, riffing on white women-led wanderlust staples like Eat, Pray, Love (2010) and Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) with one major tweak: its main characters are Black.

So it's some random rich spicy white boy.

Meet Anna (a winsome and sprightly Halle Bailey), a drifting would-be chef with a talent for bad decisions, who loses both her job and her housing in one fell swoop. She decides—because why not—to impulsively crash at an empty Tuscan villa owned by a man she barely knows. This man is Matteo (played by Lorenzo de Moor), an Italian jet-setter she meets while drowning her sorrows at the hotel bar over a beer and burger, (meticulously ordered because of said culinary background) in New York, where he’s hiding from the pressures of his family business but still nursing a quiet devotion to home. Their almost-fling is derailed by jet lag and circumstance, but he leaves her with just enough directions, suggestion, and possibility for her to take what she thinks is a hint and run with it.

She heads to Italy and makes herself at home in Matteo’s empty Tuscan villa. And what begins as a one-night squat quickly spirals when Matteo’s family arrives and, through a combination of assumption and Anna’s willingness to commit to the bit, she's suddenly his American fiancée. It’s that one small lie that becomes the film’s engine. But the charade soon becomes even more untenable once she starts catching feelings Michael (Hot Duke of Bridgerton, Regé-Jean Page), Matteo's tall, dark, and handsome British-Italian cousin.

Don't come calling me from no Tuscan jail.

The accidental scammer set-up is just an appetizer for a full course feast of Italian getaway romcom tropes. Director Kat Coiro dutifully fills the nearly two-hour film with golden-hour panoramas of slender cypress trees and stucco estates and reserves the tightest closeups for the vino and risotto. Tuscany becomes its own character, as does the adorable Fiat Topolino taxi Anna uses to zip across the vista’s dusty rolling hills. Its name, Cucci (pronounced “coochie”), scans as a slick wink from producer Will Packer to Black viewers in particular of the lust just around the corner.

The artificiality is intentional. Or at least useful. The film’s reliance on postcard visuals gives it a knowingly staged quality, like it’s less interested in Tuscany as a real place than Tuscany as a mood board. Because Stylistically, the film is doing what this genre does best: seducing you. It understands, at least structurally, that deception isn’t just a plot device—it’s foreplay.

And for most of the film, that works.

There’s something genuinely satisfying about watching intimacy unfold under false pretenses—the friction by proximity, the slow erosion of a façade. Anna isn’t just falling for Michael; she’s being forced, scene by scene, to confront the version of herself she’s been improvising. And the chemistry builds in the unbearable tension of almost telling the truth.

Yet beneath the fantasy, there’s something sharper. Anna’s lie isn’t just about circumstance—it’s about worth. About what it means to believe you don’t deserve the life you actually want, so you sneak into it instead. The film quietly tracks that insecurity, even as it wraps it in romance and scenic escapism.

Oh, this some Shonda Rhimes sh*t.

To sell its brand of wish fulfillment, the film relies almost entirely on the charisma of its leads. Anna gets by on sheer likeability, and Bailey does the same. She’s funny when she needs to be, and delivers a stirring speech in the final act that is the best thing in the whole movie. And Page, whom we know as a hunk from Bridgerton, is incredibly compelling, his Italian skills, shamelessly wet shirts, and soulful, slightly tortured masculinity encouraging the kind of escapism where nothing else matters.

Even if the core duo don't do it for you, it's cast of whacky Italian characters — like a taxi driver (played by Couple's Retreat fave Marco Calvani) who whisks Anna around town like a tanned fairy godfather—definitely will. This plot also relies on a guidebook of activities, like vineyard romping, barrel racing, and endless plates of food that give the film its knowingly artificial edge. But throwing us into wild fantasies are what rom-coms are for, aren't they? And letting a Black woman do the honors of being swept away by her European reveries makes for an intriguing update to the genre.

Because, and this is what I like most about it, this film is unabashedly cheesy. Just full-bodied, early-2000s, big budget studio-rom-com cheese. The kind that used to dominate the box office before everything needed to be IP or Oscar bait. There are contrivances. There are perfectly timed interruptions. There are sweeping emotional beats that arrive exactly when you expect them to—and the film doesn’t apologize for any of it. If anything, it feels like an argument for the return of that era, when star chemistry, a high-concept yet unrealistic premise, some zany antics, and a beautiful location were more than enough to carry a movie. In that sense, You, Me, & Tuscany isn’t just borrowing from the golden age of rom-coms; it’s trying, earnestly, to resurrect it.

Is it predictable? Absolutely. You know the lie will unravel. You know feelings will complicate everything. You know Tuscany will work its magic. But the pleasure isn’t in what happens, it’s in how long the film lets everything hang in that delicious, precarious balance before it does.

At a time when the industry appears less inclined than ever to gamble on grand movie-making gestures, this whimsical trip is more than worth taking. Look, this ain't gonna to win any awards, but it will make an excellent in-flight movie—ideally en route to Italy. 

4/5 ★: May not be nutritious, but it tastes very good.