You, Me & and Tuscany

I've been skipping the movies for a couple of weeks because nothing new has been showing that I was even slightly tempted to see. How fondly I remember an era when that almost never happened. But here we are. I finally bowed under the weight of needing to do something with my evening and took an hour-and-a-half round trip just to see this movie. And wouldn't you know it, it's exactly the plot of a Hallmark Channel movie of the week, the kind I used to watch every weekend with my parents before they moved to another state. (Boo. However, they took me out for lunch last week while passing through the area, so I forgive them.)

OK, it's maybe a little spicier than most Hallmark movies. Nia Vardalos of My Big Fat Greek Wedding drops an F-bomb in practically the first scene. The male lead, the Zimbabwean stud from Bridgerton, playing a London-educated Italian vineyard owner, gets heckled by the horny women in a passing tour bus who (in a closing credits outtake reel) are allowed to riff at off-color length. The hero girl Anna, played by Halle (Bailey, not Berry) of the girl band Halle & Chloe, actually plans on sleeping with the nice Italian guy she meets in an NYC hotel bar, but luckily for Hallmark fans' moral sensibilities she comes back from freshening herself up in the bathroom to find him passed out from jet lag on the bed. The misunderstandings that spiral out of control, until a pair of lovers' hearts are in jeopardy, actually start with Anna knowingly and deliberately committing burglary. She's no flower of innocence. But all in all, it still has that wholesome, "isn't it funny how love happens sometimes" thing going for it that you almost only see on cable TV anymore. And here it is, playing in movie theaters!

Let's back up to the beginning. Anna was studying to be a chef until her mom, also a chef, got sick and died. Now she doesn't know what to do with herself, except she doesn't want to cook. After getting fired (for good reason) from a housesitting gig, she runs for help to her friend, who works in a hotel, and who can only help her as far as comping her a drink in the hotel bar. While she's maxing her credit cards out ordering a burger, she meets an Italian dude, Matteo, who tells her all about the family he's running away from in Tuscany, and the restaurant he didn't want to take over from his dad, and the villa he owns but can't stand the sight of, and after the jet lag thing happens, she thinks, "Hey, I have an open ticket to Tuscany that my mom bought me as a graduation gift. I should go!" And predictably, she ends up staying in Matteo's villa. Also predictably, Matteo's momma and nonna catch her there, but luckily she was just trying on the engagement ring she found in a desk drawer and they put two and two together and, faced with the alternative of being arrested, she lets them think she and Matteo are getting married. The whole family gets swept up in the deception, including the cousin/adoptive brother, Michael – the vineyard owner whose eight-pack becomes a highlight of a passing bus tour, and with whom Anna starts to feel a real, mutual attraction just when Matteo sweeps into town. And of course, as soon as he sees how happy Anna's deception has made his family, he joins right in. Only he's not into her, she's not into him and things between Matteo and Michael go from bad to worse ... right up to the Hallmark Channel patent formula, 15-minutes-before-the-end crisis when all becomes clear except whether the true lovers will find true love.

So, there are no surprises. And in addition to all the hallmarks of Hallmark, there's also the fact that we (meaning I) just saw Solo Mio a minute ago, also featuring an American who stumbles upon romance in the Italian countryside, right down to a scene with a race in the streets of a small town (men rolling wine barrels in this case, horses in the other). And while Andrea Bocelli doesn't appear in this movie, as himself or anyone else, there is a guy who wakes Anna up every morning, all cockerel like, singing "Brindisi" from La Traviata. (Funnily enough, the song is much more forgiving of Giuseppe the groundskeeper's amateur voice than Nessun dorma as sung by Kevin James.) Also, of course, there are vineyards in both movies. Where this movie actually tops Kevin James' opus is in the space it gives the members of the love interest's Italian family to develop as distinct characters, portrayed with such affection that you care about them and believe that Anna would come to do so as well. Instead of flooding the cast with American tourists (again, like the James film) whose personality quirks upstage the Italian cyphers, this movie actually fills the screen with these small-town folks and creates a sense of home and warmth and emotional stakes that an audience (gasp, even in the U.S.) can really feel.

So, in spite of all I've said about this being a cable TV movie stretched onto the big screen, it is for sure a better movie than Solo Mio. It made me feel good. And I'm happy to present the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Whatever scene Lorenzo, the cab driver, is in. Anna doesn't take his advice (to tell everyone the truth from the start), but he is delighted with how "romantic" her way of handling the situation is, and that makes his appearances throughout the movie charming, funny and strategically mood lightening. (2) The scenes where Anna cooks, whether it's tomato toast for one (or two) in Matteo's villa or the special of the day on the last day of the summer festival in the family's restaurant. I want to eat all of that food. (3) Of course, the knock-down fight between Matteo and Michael, when the truth finally has to come out because two brothers are about to kill each other over a romantic rivalry that doesn't really exist. It's the kind of thing they write operas about.