Spring may be in full bloom, but it’s easy to look ahead to summer vacation — the promise of travel, good food, and an adventure beyond the mundanity of everyday life, even better if there’s someone to share it with or meet along the way. Italy is a popular destination, with its own romance baked into its atmosphere, and that’s why beloved romantic comedies, like Roman Holiday and Under the Tuscan Sun, have used the country as their setting to explore romance. The latest rom-com stamping its passport there is You, Me & Tuscany, led by The Little Mermaid star Halle Bailey and Black Bag star Regé-Jean Page.
Directed by Kat Coiro (Marry Me), You, Me & Tuscany wears its heart on its sleeve for Nancy Meyers and Richard Curtis while delivering a fresh, original big studio romantic comedy. Bailey and Page’s chemistry sells its premise while being supported by a memorable cast and a gorgeous setting. In a way, You, Me & Tuscany is like spaghetti: warm, familiar, and filling. It delivers what it promises and has a good time doing it.
What Is ‘You, Me & Tuscany’ About?
After being fired from a house sitting job, Anna (Bailey) has a chance encounter with an Italian real estate agent, Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), in a hotel bar. He convinces her to throw caution to the wind and go to Italy. But once she gets to his hometown, Anna decides to squat at Matteo’s empty villa after she can’t find a place to stay. When his family discovers her staying there, Anna pretends to be engaged to Matteo. What starts as a simple lie gets more complicated when she continues to spend more time with them, especially Matteo’s attractive cousin/adopted brother, Michael (Page).
While much of the plot has shades of While You Were Sleeping, the setting trades a wintery Chicago for the summer escape of Tuscany. From Matteo’s villa to Michael’s vineyard to the family restaurant in the town square, You, Me & Tuscany captures the beauty of the region. However, it goes further than just sweeping landscapes and historic architecture. Similarly to Under the Tuscan Sun, Anna starts as a visitor to the region but quickly immerses herself into the culture because of Matteo’s family. Anna is looking for a sense of belonging, and the warmth of this Italian family embraces her with open arms. By extension, You, Me & Tuscany invites audiences into the culture and customs of this town, dropping you during a local summer festival with their own traditions, like barrel racing. With this type of narrative immersion, the region isn’t just a vacation but a character in its own right.
Another key aspect that makes the world of You, Me & Tuscany feel lived in are the supporting characters. Not merely a backdrop to the two leads, the cast around Bailey and Page are just as entertaining. Stella Pecollo‘s Francesca, Matteo’s sister, is her own loose canon of comedy, dropping nuggets of her own secret love affair with a plumber named Luigi (no relation to Super Mario Bros.). Marco Calvani‘s Lorenzo, a taxi driver who Anna befriends, provides Anna with enthusiastic yet earnest support as she navigates lying to Matteo’s family and starts to fall for Michael. Even Anna’s best friend, Claire (Aziza Scott), still has a presence despite remaining stateside for Anna’s Italian adventure. These side characters are just as rich, bringing their own flavor that enhances the central love story.
‘You, Me & Tuscany’ Proves Regé-Jean Page Is Still a Romantic Leading Man
A good rom-com can have a decent plot and play with tried and true tropes. But without chemistry between its leads, the movie’s still going to fall apart. Thankfully, this is not the case with Regé-Jean Page and Halle Bailey, as their chemistry makes Anna and Michael’s attraction believable. What helps is that the two briefly meet after Anna arrives in town and has a rude encounter with Michael after he takes the sandwich she was about to purchase. Already there are sparks, which ignite the flames of what becomes a sizzling love story.
Bridgerton became a global phenomenon off the backs of Phoebe Dynevor and Regé-Jean Page, and their chemistry set the bar of excellence for what a historical romance series could be. Page’s performance as Duke Simon Hastings was so mesmerizing that he earned an Emmy nomination for the role. In his first romantic role since then, it’s abundantly clear that Bridgerton wasn’t a one-time thing. With You, Me & Tuscany, Page is a romantic leading man in his own right. As Michael, he has an effortless charm and magnitude that you can’t look away from. When it comes to the Costa family, Page carries Michael’s weight of responsibility as the brother who stayed while holding some resentment towards the prodigal son who seemingly got the girl. Plus, it turns out Page is a gifted singer, as Michael serenades Anna with his rendition of Mario‘s “Let Me Love You.”
On the flip side, Halle Bailey’s Anna wasn’t planning to find love in Italy. Anna is a culinary school dropout still grieving her mother’s death, something she later bonds over with Michael. She’s been so content pretending to live someone else’s life through house sitting that she forgot to live her own dreams. Thanks to Michael and the Costa family, her passion for cooking slowly returns. Due to this, Page does more of the heavy lifting with the love story, while Bailey brings more of her strengths to Anna’s personal journey. This isn’t to say Bailey doesn’t bring anything to the love story, far from it. Michael carries himself as the responsible one of the family, but Anna draws out his more playful side, which is thanks to Bailey’s natural charisma. She even has a great chemistry with de Moor when Anna meets Matteo in New York. With this and The Little Mermaid, Bailey continues to hone her acting skills.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
‘You, Me & Tuscany’ Offers a Promising Future for Theatrical Rom-Coms
Rege-Jean Page and Halle Bailey in ‘You, Me & Tuscany’Image via Universal Pictures
In the words of Ted Lasso, I believe in rom-communism. I was brought up during a time when there was a steady output of romantic comedies as part of a studio’s annual slate. During the 2010s, the genre was seemingly abandoned, reduced only to being found on streaming. This isn’t to say there haven’t been romantic gems on streaming; Netflix kicked off the year with the Emily Henry adaptation of People We Meet on Vacation, which is its own form of romantic travel escapism. In the years since, many fans have grown nostalgic for the greats of the ’90s and ’00s, like You’ve Got Mail and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. There have been a few studio rom-coms that have broken through, like Crazy Rich Asians and Anyone But You, but too few have been given a real chance in theaters.
You, Me & Tuscany evokes those types of romantic comedies we’ve been missing. The movie isn’t reinventing the wheel — it is ultimately a love story that plays with familiar tropes in a beautiful setting. But it does remind audiences why we love these movies in the first place. You, Me & Tuscany is now part of this rom-com legacy, and if audiences enjoy it enough, perhaps it will signal to major studios that original rom-coms are worth investing in again.
