Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page Rom-Com

There are worse things than watching beautiful people in Tuscany. Halle Bailey sparkles as Anna, the heroine of this fairy-tale romance. Regé-Jean Page doesn’t have much to do except smile and show his abs but he’s very good at that. You, Me & Tuscany is entirely by-the-numbers, from its movies-as-tourism approach to the big Italian family that owns a restaurant. But it is expertly directed by Kat Coiro and produced by Will Packer for maximum crowd-pleasing impact, offering the kind of pretty escapist fantasy that is especially appealing in these fraught times.

The rickety premise is set out in early scenes in New York, more slowly than it needs to be. Anna, an American at loose ends who has lost her last job housesitting, meets handsome Italian Matteo (Lorenzo De Moor) at a hotel bar. Through the kind of wacky misadventure that only happens in rom-coms and sitcoms, the next day she takes off for his home village, the fictional San Conessa, can’t find a hotel room and lets herself into his gorgeous, unoccupied villa.

From the time Anna arrives in Tuscany, Danny Ruhlmann’s lush cinematography becomes as much a reason to watch as the actors. The camera soars over the Tuscan hills, roams lovingly through Matteo’s sleekly tasteful house and catches every glittering beam of sun.

Matteo’s family mistakenly assumes Anna is his fiancée and she goes along with the pretense, which she regrets as soon as she falls for his cousin, Michael (Page), who runs the family vineyard. You’re not even meant to wonder if they’ll get together, just how fast.

This is not the kind of film you look to for realism, of course. Or originality. This is the kind of film that doesn’t miss a trope, wrangling them all in. Back in New York Anna has a brash, truth-telling best friend, Claire (Aziza Scott), who gets some of the best lines. In Tuscany she meets a high-spirited taxi driver, Lorenzo (Marco Calvani), who drives a comically small Fiat and instantly becomes her friend and confidante. She arrives in time for a colorful village festival. And it never rains in this fantasy. Anna and Michael do get drenched by the sprinkler system in his vineyard, though, giving Michael a reason to take off his wet shirt without their enduring any actual bad weather. Anna dropped out of culinary school after her mother, a chef, died, so of course she eventually cooks in the family restaurant.

Through it all, Bailey’s star power shines. She holds the camera’s attention, pops off the screen and gives Anna an innocent energy that makes her ruses seem mischievous and harmless. The film gives her a couple of Julia Roberts style rom-com moments, mini-monologues that she handles with flair.  When she finally tells Michael she loves him, it’s a little like the “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy” scene from Notting Hill, but with a second drenching from the sprinkler.

Page is a bit stiff, but then so is Michael, an underwritten character who spends most of the film resisting the woman he thinks is engaged to his cousin. Some clunky dialogue tells us that when he was a boy Michael’s parents died and he was raised by his aunt and uncle as Matteo’s brother. Ryan Engle’s script orchestrates things so that Michael and Anna get to bond over dead parents, but that plot device also leads to the rare, quieter scene that gives Page more to work with.

Coiro (Marry Me) directs the romance and family scenes efficiently. The flourishes are saved for the cinematography, and for visual touches like the bright Medieval costumes for the festival parade and the well-styled food.

At one point a group of tourists stops in the vineyard. Two women spot Anna and Michael kissing and compare what they see to Under the Tuscan Sun and Eat, Pray, Love. The creators of You, Me & Tuscany know exactly what lane they’re in and have no interest in veering out of it. Luckily, they make that work.