Review of You, Me, & Tuscany, directed by Kat Coiro

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently started an 8-5 job and have been trying to reclaim my sanity and hobbies by finding fun things to do on the weekends and after work, and one of my saving graces truly has been my AMC A List subscription. I’ve always had one on and off throughout graduate school, and I recently reclaimed my subscription after a brief stint of thinking I was going to move to India (long story).

Sometimes the movies I really want to see aren’t included on AMC A List, which is sad, but I accept the reality of the situation. I get a ton of use out of this subscription despite that. On a slightly different note though, I used to work professionally as a film critic, which is very much a dying career, and when I would go to the film festivals I watched everything that really excited me.

A List is also an opportunity for me to go outside of my comfort zone. Recently, at the time of typing this, I’ve seen a handful of movies I don’t think I would have ever seen if I had to actually pay for them. I see so many movies throughout different states on A List that I basically make money off of AMC, rather than spending money. I have an entire spreadsheet for it.

Anyways, when I first started getting hit with the trailers for You, Me, & Tuscany I knew I wanted to see the movie. Something about the Tuscany countryside and a rom-com featuring two nonwhite characters really spoke to me in this moment, and so on a rainy Saturday my sister and I went to our local AMC to see the movie.

Let’s get into the review!

A house sitter pursues her deceased mom and her’s dream of going to Italy—and finds love somewhere along the way.

Our main character in this movie is Anna, who, after growing up in Atlanta, came up north with her mother to pursue a culinary career. Her mother worked as a Michelin star restaurant and Anna went to culinary school, but when her mother passed away suddenly, Anna dropped out with two months to go and became a house sitter for rich people.

In the present day, Anna is caught wearing her client’s clothes and lingerie and is told to leave. She does this often on her Instagram and builds kind of a following there, but when she goes to her friend’s workplace after losing the one gig, she meets an Italian guy named Matteo at the hotel bar.

Matteo tells her to pursue her dreams basically and invites her back into his room. She expects to have a steamy night, but he falls asleep, so she goes through his phone’s pictures of Italy instead and sends herself the selfie they took along with pictures of his house. He leaves early the next morning and Anna decides to pursue her dream of going to Tuscany.

There, she befriends a taxi driver named Lorenzo and discovers that every hotel in the area is booked out for the festival. When she tries to buy a sandwich as her first meal, a handsome stranger steals it from the case before her and tells her good luck with sleeping on a bench. As night falls, Anna remembers she has pictures of Matteo’s home, finds it abandoned, then sleeps there.

The next morning Anna wakes up to the gardener singing. She finds an engagement ring in a drawer and puts it on, then walks in Gabriella, Matteo’s mother, and his grandmother. When Gabriella assumes Anna is Matteo’s fiance, Anna goes with it and then says he’s coming home, much to the joy of his mother.

Lorenzo tells Anna she could come clean, but when she goes to do so she’s welcomed heavily into Matteo’s family. She also formally meets Michael, the handsome stranger from before who happens to be Matteo’s cousin, and Gabriella starts obsessively planning the wedding that isn’t actually going to happen.

Michael comes to pick Anna up the next day for a tour of the vineyard he runs, where Gabriella is planning the wedding. Anna meets Isabella, Matteo’s ex-fiance, and discovers Isabella now hates her because of that. Michael and Anna drink together and he protects her edges in the vineyard, kickstarting some romantic feelings there.

But’s all thrown to the side when Matteo comes home after Isabella called him. At first he wants Anna to come clean, but when he sees his family genuinely is happy with the news, he rolls with it too. A rivalry between Matteo and Michael breaks out during the rolling of the barrels, where the grandmother and others notice that Michael has a thing for Anna.

Matteo ends up going out with his friends and Isabella, leaving Anna alone with the family again. She wants to come clean, but when he comes home that night he refuses to tell the truth. They’re interrupted with news that his father is in the hospital. With a big day coming up, Matteo volunteers Anna to be the chef at the family restaurant instead of his father.

She rolls up to the restaurant and cooks alone, while Michael spots Matteo getting romantic with Isabella. Anna’s dish, inspired by her mother, is a hit with the patrons, but the night ends with Michael and Matteo brawling. Anna comes clean with the truth and walks away, but as she waits at the bus the next morning, the grandmother tells her that it’s not too late.

With the family’s encouragement and admitting their own sins, Anna goes to find Michael in the vineyard. They confess to each other, and an epilogue tells us that Anna stays with the family to work at the restaurant.

Overall Thoughts

This is a cute movie, even though its romcom logic can be frustrating at times and force plot points to arrive with very little sense or at a breakneck speed. I feel like we kind of forgot the dead mother in the end, even though it was brought up repeatedly at the beginning of the movie. I guess though that is healing from trauma, too.

I also really enjoyed how unapologetically Black this was at times. It felt really refreshing to see a movie that centered these kinds of romance stories, with the little details feeling like they weren’t forced to fit a narrative. I also want to see more stories of Black women traveling—I realized after watching it I’ve never seen in popular culture these kinds of stories.

This movie isn’t perfect, but it also doesn’t try to be at the end of the day. I say go watch it if you’re interested and have a free weekend night. You might find yourself in for a good time!

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