Pack your bags, it’s time for a getaway. That’s the sentiment of Anna, heroine of You, Me & Tuscany. She spontaneously takes off to Italy to find herself, unaware she would also find love.
Led by Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, this romantic comedy packs in family drama and personal growth into a sweet and savory theatrical experience set against the gorgeous backdrop of an Italian summer.
Feeling lost in New York City, Anna (Halle Bailey) jets off to a rural Tuscan village after a chance encounter with a charming Italian man named Matteo (Lorenzo De Moor). Anna hopes her trip will help her reconnect to her late mom and rekindle their shared dream of becoming a chef, but she finds herself entangled in a different batch of family ties. After crashing Matteo’s villa, she covers up her break-in by convincing his family that they’re engaged. Her complicated situation is heightened in drama when sparks begin to fly between her and Matteo’s brother, Michael (Regé-Jean Page). Anna finds a support system in Michael’s family and a friendly taxi driver, and she realizes that Tuscany may be the home she’s been longing for.
I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a virtual roundtable interview with other student journalists hosted by NBCUniversal. I heard firsthand from stars Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, as well as director Kat Coiro and producer Will Packer, about the effort and passion that went into bringing this story to life.
“Sure, it’s about a beautiful woman and a beautiful man falling in love, but it’s also a journey of self-discovery and about falling in love with yourself and how if you want to be loved, you have to love yourself,” says Kat Coiro.
Romance feels as natural to Italy as pasta. Hollywood history is to thank, as a wave of production abroad in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s, known as “Hollywood on the Tiber,” produced romances such as Three Coins in the Fountain and the beloved Roman Holiday. You, Me & Tuscany follows in their footsteps with a modern flair. Its soundtrack is bursting with R&B beats, and its script is alive with quippy dialogue. It also stands apart from other rom-coms on both sides of the camera. Films directed by women are still the minority, and rarer still are films with two Black romantic leads. Movies like You, Me & Tuscany seek to change this norm, not through biting critique of narrow expectations but through the secure normalcy of Black love.
“If it’s normal in real life, it should be normal on screen. If you expect to fall in love someday, you should expect to see us fall in love on screen,” says Regé-Jean Page.
This film can break barriers in the romance genre because it is not confined to the expectations of genre.
“I don’t really believe in genre when I’m working,” says Coiro. “When it comes to my process, it’s really about capturing human emotion. And it can be funny, it can be sad, it can be heartbreaking, it can be heartwarming. And that’s kind of how life is.”
Anna’s story culminates in her finding home. This means reconnecting with her culinary passion, embracing her bold spirit, being accepted within a family, and being swept off her feet by Michael. None of these has to exclude the others.
“I loved her arc as a young woman because I felt like I could learn so much from her and learn that it’s okay to not have it all together all the time, and you will get through it,” says Halle Bailey.
This film feels refreshingly real, as far as rom-coms go. Anna’s kind, energetic demeanor makes you wish you were her friend, and it’s easy to sense why she falls for the steady, hardworking Michael. Their romance is believable in part because the story was developed by a married duo, Ryan Engle and Kristin Engle. Even within the fictional world of the movie, there is a dash of truth.
The same notion applies to the film’s setting. As the title implies, the location of Italy is crucial to You, Me & Tuscany. The principal photography took place on location in Tuscany. Key spots seen in the film, from the town with the family’s restaurant to the vineyard and villa, operate as such places in real life. While some interiors were shot on built sets in Cinecittà, even that location has a long history in Italian cinema and is still the largest film studio in Europe. Simply waking up in the beauty of Italy every day helped Page and Bailey feel at home on set and as their characters.
“As Anna, I was able to connect better to the story, better to the arc of the script, because she’s discovering all of this for the first time, and it was my first time in Tuscany,” says Bailey. “You see pictures, you see, you know, screensavers of it, and you’re like, yeah, that’s beautiful. But when you’re there, it’s like, whoa. So I love the fact that the setting and where we were really influenced the story. It helped us build that chemistry that Anna and Michael were supposed to have.”
Anna makes the most of her time in Tuscany. Between vineyard tours, wine tastings, barrel racing, and cooking with Michael’s family, this film puts a spotlight on Italian culture. As such, the filmmakers were careful to keep their representation accurate.
“When you hear the jokes and see the sandwiches that they eat, every single thing was questioned, interrogated and kind of weighed in on by the cast and the crew,” says Coiro.
“It’s not a made-up version of Italy, it’s the version that we lived,” Page says.
You, Me & Tuscany wants you to believe in love.
“Romantic comedies have become very cynical. This is not that kind of movie,” says producer Will Packer. “The best version of this medium of film that we work in is when it allows you to disconnect from your real world and enter another world, an aspirational world in some aspects.”
While grounded in the real world, this movie reflects “the world as it can be, as your life could be if you took that risk, if you committed to growing into living out your dreams,” says Page.
This film is unashamedly escapist. But to fully escape into Anna and Michael’s Tuscan romance, you need to put down your phone, kick your feet up, and simply let yourself take in the sight and sound of the story. You need to go to the theater.
“Will and I share this desire to have people go together and disconnect from technology, but connect to the person they’re sitting next to and connect to the story,” says Coiro.
“I love the idea of love. I love the idea of having escapist fare where you take your phone and shut it off for an hour and a half and just go and get transported to another place,” says Packer.
“I think if people go to the theater, they will have that little vacation,” says Coiro.
You, Me & Tuscany is only in theaters on April 10th. Don’t miss your chance to experience this molto bene romance!