New releases: You, Me & Tuscany, Solo Mio and Undertone

At the end of the cred­its for You, Me & Tuscany there’s a stern warn­ing that the film may not be used to train any AI mod­el, which would be praise­worthy were it not for the fact that the film itself already appears to be have crawled out of one.

One of those ‘American dis­cov­ers them­selves and finds love thanks to beau­ti­ful European coun­try and crazy European people’, it is so ton­ally inspired by My Big Fat Greek Wedding that it’s cre­at­or, Nia Vardalos, makes a cameo appear­ance to show her approval.

Halle Bailey (The Little Mermaid, The Color Purple, but not the good ver­sions of either of those films) plays Anna, a young woman who is reel­ing from per­son­al tragedy by mak­ing irre­spons­ible per­son­al decisions – to the frus­tra­tion of sassy best friend Claire (Aziza Scott). Down to her last work­ing cred­it card, Anna befriends a hand­some Italian real estate something-or-other in a hotel bar, dis­cov­ers that he has fallen out with his fam­ily and left his Tuscan vil­lage home, nev­er to return. There’s a beau­ti­ful villa, just sit­ting there empty. Why should­n’t Anna go and live in it for a while until she has sor­ted her­self out? At least, that’s what Anna thinks. Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor) has passed out on the bed thanks to a com­bin­a­tion of liquor and jet lag.

It’s not long before Anna is dis­covered in Matteo’s lux­uri­ous home and makes up a story about being Matteo’s fiancée, instantly mak­ing his fam­ily happy, both at the impend­ing wed­ding and about the fact that he will shortly be com­ing home.

Heartthrob Regé-Jean Page (Bridgerton) plays Michael, Matteo’s wine­maker cousin-slash-brother. The pre­cise rela­tion­ship between the two men is clum­sily handled, because the film­makers don’t really want to explain why Michael is black in a white Italian fam­ily and why he has an English accent but also speaks per­fect Italian, while at the same time they want his hand­some black-ness to be not­able for Anna and Claire but invis­ible to every­one else¹.

It won’t amount to spoil­ers for me to say that Anna melts Michael’s all-business heart – the film even­tu­ally lets her sing – and Michael prompts Anna to come clean about the truth of her non-relationship with Matteo. On the way, we get plen­ti­ful rich-people con­sump­tion porn (includ­ing Maserati product place­ment) and Anna demon­strat­ing her dormant cook­ing skills to save the day in the fam­ily’s restaurant.

A crowd-pleasing film for the eas­ily pleased, there was even some applause at the screen­ing I atten­ded. Maybe for Regé-Jean’s eight-pack.

If that par­tic­u­lar ver­sion of ‘wounded American healed by Italy’ isn’t enough for you, in Solo Mio Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop) is jilted at the altar in Rome and per­suaded to do the hon­ey­moon vaca­tion pack­age alone. Two oth­er American couples on the same tour try and help him get over things but it’s the own­er of the loc­al cof­fee shop who proves that he has a future.

Mostly maudlin – and with an awk­wardly old fash­ioned atti­tude to gender – Solo Mio fea­tures some teeth-grindingly awful coin­cid­ences and an inex­plic­able cameo appear­ance by Andrea Bocelli. James has made his mate­ship with Adam Sandler go an awful long way and his sad sack per­form­ance wears thin early on and does­n’t improve. What these women see in his char­ac­ter, I can­’t for the life of me work out.

The most inter­est­ing things about Canadian hor­ror Undertone are the cir­cum­stances of its mak­ing. Writer-director Ian Tuason was the solo care­giver for his par­ents while they were sim­ul­tan­eously dying of can­cer dur­ing Covid and he turned that exper­i­ence into a low-budget chiller that he shot in the fam­ily home where his par­ents died.

Podcaster Evy (Nina Kiri) is alone with her comatose moth­er, hop­ing that the end won’t be too pain­ful and drawn out. Some mys­ter­i­ous audio files, sent by her co-host, spark incip­i­ent para­noia as the fear, loneli­ness, insom­nia, sub­stance abuse along with all the Catholic paraphernalia that sur­rounds con­spires to push her towards – and then over – the edge. 

Just as the hor­ror of The Rule of Jenny Pen isn’t the pos­sessed plastic doll so much as the fear of being old, feeble and forced to eat insti­tu­tion­al food, Undertone’s hor­ror is of being trapped and power­less watch­ing a par­ent slowly die.

Until the end when it dives right in to its demon­ic pos­ses­sion con­ceit and becomes very unpleas­ant as a result.

Further listening

I offered up radio ver­sions of these reviews for RNZ’s Culture 101 slot on Sunday after­noon. Listen to my con­ver­sa­tion with Braydon Priest and decide for your­self which ver­sion is more coher­ent or entertaining.

1. There’s a big­ger art­icle to be writ­ten here – by a per­son of col­our rather than myself – about a film that’s acutely aware of race on some levels but stu­di­ously ignores it on oth­ers. Producer Will Packer has made a career out of mak­ing con­tent for African-American audi­ences but the dra­mat­ic implic­a­tions of Anna’s unex­pec­ted entry into this world go unex­plored. ↩︎