No, my wife didn’t have to drag me kicking and screaming to see You, Me, & Tuscany, which I will henceforth reference as its original and much cooler name, “Italianna.” I understand the leery marketing reasons for the change; most Americans are dumb and less likely to patronize a movie whose title they can’t be arsed to pronounce. Real talk (uh, Reel Talk?), most moviegoers decided if they were going to see Italianna based upon the key art featuring two Black leads and romantic interests, Halle Bailey (as [Bri]Anna) and Regé-Jean Page (as Michael). For this reason, I am including Italianna as part of the Black Pantheon.
I apologize to the film aficionados out there because I’m not sure if “romantic interests” and “leads” are redundant in a romantic comedy; I would think that a “lead” in a romcom is an implied romantic interest. I’m out of practice, having not seen a romcom since The Lovebirds (2020). In what feels like a dying genre because they don’t yield the ROIs that make execs richer than god, Italianna won’t resuscitate its film category yet provides a formula for a kind of escapism that (Black) women should endeavor to experience, and (Black) men should heed.
Italianna is a pure female flower fantasy, an intentionally crafted antithesis to the male power fantasy trope where some generically able-bodied white dude resolves all conflicts with violence and gets the girl. Instead, in this flower fantasy, Anna resolves all conflicts with niceties and serendipity.
The film begins with Anna waking up in the morning, melanin moisturized and poppin, locs fresh and frizzless. She sets her fancy latte upon an opulent kitchen table as the camera pans out to show that she’s living large. She adorns a Versace dress and takes to the streets in heels as my wife whispers to me in dejection, wondering about the state of her feet after such an excursion. Toy dog leading the way, vendors on the streets know Anna by name, yet she purchases nothing. She merely bathes in the sights, sounds, and smells of the city. Upon her return to the condo, its owner shatters the illusion, literally dressing Anna down out of the borrowed Versace lingerie. Anna delivers the punchline, “I was going to wash it,” to the perplexed wealthy white woman before the scene shifts.
Not a single cuss word exchanged, no assaults upon her personhood, no threats of police intervention. I know that if I caught someone wearing my luxe, we moving some furniture! Instead, Italiannna’s opening scene sets the tone for what is to be expected. In director Cat Corio’s flower fantasy, Anna gets away with everything! Rent overdue, credit cards maxed out, now an unemployed house sitter after the aforementioned termination—none of it matters. Anna punctuates her day with a fancy burger while in the company of the handsome European, Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor). No housing? No problem! Traveling businessman Matteo invites her up to his room and she accepts. I’m now expecting a quid pro quo situation masquerading as a link after Anna excuses herself to the WC to freshen up after a long day. I am spared when Anna exits to Matteo comically sawing logs. Seemingly ambivalent while auspiciously evading a not-rape situation, she doesn’t disturb him. After unlocking Matteo’s phone with his unconscious countenance and some weird iPhone photo sharing shenanigans, Anna dozes off and awakens to a note from Matteo urging her to follow her dreams and visit Italy, with a PS that she can order whatever she wants. So of course the 5”2 Anna orders one of everything on the breakfast menu and invites her friend, Claire (Aziza Scott) up for a feast.
With absolutely zero planning, Anna travels to Tuscany, and everyone is preposterously friendly to her, except for the one person who nearly runs her over in town. Because this is a romcom, we just know that this first person who is a straight up jerk to Anna will be a Character of Interest. Sure enough, he reappears in a delicatessen as the other actor featured on the Italianna’s promo poster, Michael (Regé-Jean Page). Brusque and unconcerned with the invisible angels spotlighting Anna’s every step with sun rays from heaven, he snatches up the sandwich she was eyeballing, but ends up sharing half of it with her when she confronts him around the corner with a pouty face.
Michael does not invite her back to where he lives because only thirty minutes have elapsed in the movie, so bring on more illogicality! All rooms are booked for a festival, so Anna retrieves Matteo’s address from the hacked photo and takes a taxi to his vacant chateau where she finds the keys among some outdoor pottery and lets herself in. She’s all up in this man’s business, including trying on an engagement ring found at the bottom of a sock drawer. The next morning, when Matteo’s family busts up her squatting situation, Matteo’s mother spots the ring and assumes Anna’s marrying Matteo, and Anna goes along with the lie. The whole family except mama is elated—Matteo the prodigal son is set to return, sending his bride-to-be in advance.
So Anna freeloads as a false fiancée, exchanging the company of Matteo’s famiglia for room and board. The most pleasurable of her duties includes hanging out with Michael, the adopted son or whatever plot point Corio and screenwriters Ryan and Kristin N. Engle fabricate to justify casting a Black man to play a character living a productive and successful life in rural Tuscany. Bailey and Page’s chemistry emanates with enough intensity that I struggled with the indolence of their relationship development. Like, can we just get on with the resolution to this farce already? When Italiana finally relieves Anna of the farce, she gets off easy. Instead, there’s a proxy fight over her honor!
My brain justifies the suspension of disbelief that a flower fantasy requires by indicating Halle Bailey’s uncanny beauty combined with her character understanding, yet not speaking Italian—likely a Bailey limitation—working in her favor. However, my brain also remembers how PassportTube informs us that Italia is as hostile to Black people as it is beautiful (Ex 1; Ex 2. I mean, we know good and darn well that screenwriters the Engles didn’t have a Black lead for Italianna in mind, but I’m glad not all “DEI” regressed after November 5, 2025. I commend Corio for leveraging her relationship with Universal Pictures to platform Bailey, an incontestably brown woman, in a modern romcom. Only Claire acknowledges Anna’s race, providing comic commentary similar to what Lil Rel Howery brings as a TSA agent in Get Out (2017) or Courtney Taylor in The Invitation (2020). Thus, it is entirely possible for women of all creeds to envision themselves in Anna’s shoes and salivate over Mr. Bridgerton. Likewise with Page, I am glad to see a Black man play the true romantic interest in a romcom, because while I’m not opposed to a swirl, Shonda Rhimes has inundated us already. Of course, I must acknowledge the obviousness of Page’s cosmopolitan marketability in contrast to Aldis Hodge, Sterling K. Brown, or Isaiah Mustafa. IYKYK.
Though I enjoyed Italianna far more than The Lovebirds, one thing the latter gets right is how it reminds us that there are more than two races, let alone ethnicities. Let’s see more of them! Simu Liu, for example, not being someone’s love interest after making the ladies swoon in Shang-Chi crazy. That said, with Italianna’s escapism turned up to MAXIMUM, (Black) women can just relax and enjoy the pampering, the buoyancy, the placid. (Black) men can watch the movie as a lesson on providing a stress-free getaway for their beloved. One of the best parts of the film that I hadn’t mentioned? Nobody has sex! Indeed, how Italianna places emphasis on intimacy so that it can’t be confused with sex, is the film’s greatest achievement.
~fin~
I’m still trying to get “good” at this blogging thing…whatever that means. I initially included some esoteric stuff, and excised it not only because it seemed pretentious even for my standards, but also because I discovered that there’s a book on the subject that I haven’t read, which is both good and bad. The worst part of editing is suspending or even killing what feels like great ideas.
So here it is.
Anna is a flâneuse. She is more than merely the female version of Charles Baudelaire’s aimless, meandering, metropolitan, affluent male flâneur. A flâneuse is a renegade, a woman exploring spaces once examined in exclusively male terms. Like her male counterpart, she exercises privilege when wandering whilst liberated from obligation and necessity. Patriarchal ideologies designate work for men, yet historically, domesticity women, both work and domesticity. Conversations unfolding in rocking chairs on porches or at kitchen tables once deployed “wandering woman” as a pejorative for the biblical wayward woman—the prostitute, the adulteress, or the fornicator—taking points women regurgitate amongst women about other women. This level of internalization isn’t new; tradwifey mimics the Cult of Domesticity but with 21st century viral encroachment through social media. These patriarchal iterations disparage women exercising agency with bad faith arguments; to them, a flâneuse exposes herself to potential harassment, trafficking, and the like. Despite the popular sayings in barbershops and…IDK, gun ranges? Hunting grounds? Wherever white men congregate, they do not subscribe to “a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets,” but instead, the Freudian Madonna-Whore complex. “Ladies” and “freaks” are mutually exclusive rather than a partner preference.
Blerd Beats 