Does Italian media go equally as bananas as its Irish counterpart when Hollywood churns out another patronising comedy built from broad, borderline-offensive cliches that were banished from most other media decades ago? Will a hundred columnists be writing parodies of this dumbfoundingly rattlebrained entertainment when it arrives at the Florence gigaplex?
Probably not. The Italians are surely more mature about these things. So, allow me to do so on their behalf.
You, Me & Tuscany, an ill-conceived attempt to secure clean-cut Halle Bailey a place on the romcom ladder, confirms that the industry’s default vision of rural Italy shares much in common with its take on rural Ireland. Put simply, it sees both as the domain of charming yokels whose outward stupidity is balanced by a sort of instinctive folk wisdom. They donna know much about the bigga ceety, but they canna feela the love in a bella girl’s heart (or the cod Irish equivalent).
Kat Coiro’s film-like thing begins in familiar territory. Bailey, best known here for the live-action The Little Mermaid, turns up as Anna, a sometime cook reduced to housesitting for wealthy snoots in Manhattan. Sacked after being caught in her employer’s clothes, she encounters Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), an Italian émigré, and hooks up for the night. There may actually be some genuine insight in what happens next. He offers to put her up if she’s ever in Tuscany (the sort of thing we Europeans say without meaning it). She takes the offer semi-literally (as Americans are wont to do).
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The details of the set-up are hardly worth recalling but, suffice to say, Anna travels to that area of northern Italy, finds all accommodation booked up and makes a feeble attempt to take Lorenzo up on the offer he didn’t really make. By accident as much as design, she finds herself squatting in his empty house and posing as his fiancee to the circling family.
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You, Me & Tuscany honours two perfectly honourable romcom conventions. The female lead is trapped in a false identity that, on discovery, is sure to detonate any liaison with a handsome beloved. We also have the adornment that sees her nominally attached to the wrong man – here the missing Matteo – while the blindingly obvious right man flits about the foreground. If you don’t immediately grasp, on first sight of Regé-Jean Page as cousin Michael, that the blindingly handsome, endlessly charming wine maker (what else?) is meant for her then you haven’t seen a film before.
Never mind all that. This project exists to establish the new Super Mario film, currently eating the box office alive, as, by comparison, a ruggedly authentic depiction of the Italian character to compare with neo-realistic classics such as Bicycle Thieves and Rome, Open City. Fat idiots in Micksploitation flicks tend to lean indolently on gates while spouting about leprechauns. Here they turn up at the crack of dawn to yell out opera at the bottom of the garden. The inevitable helpful idiot, who explains Italian life to her, drives a very small taxi – something American films continue to find hilarious – while slapping his forehead at every outrageous turn. Take out the endless drone shots of sweltering vineyards and you could get the film done in close to an hour (which would be no bad thing).
As ever, all these thumping stereotypes would matter less if there was some chemistry between the two leads. Page has sufficient charisma to skirt through the absurdity unscathed. In contrast, Bailey seems dazzled and bemused – neither crafty enough nor ingenuous enough to make sense of the central deceit. “She came for the pasta. And got lost in the sauce,” the tagline blares.
Mamma mia! Am Ia crazee, or doesa that make sense?
In cinemas from Friday, April 10th
