Daniele Luchetti’s latest film, You, Me, Us, arrives on Netflix with an exceptional Italian cast led by Elio Germano and Maria Chiara Giannetta. It’s the kind of well-written Italian movie that deserves the chance to be seen well beyond its home audience.
At its center is adoption, but You, Me, Us becomes about much more than the process itself. It’s a romantic comedy about ordinary people, mixing romance, drama, and some welcome comic relief as two people are forced to confront their fears and desires, and perhaps become slightly better versions of themselves along the way.
Simone (Germano) and Lucia (Giannetta) are very different people. He’s a firefighter, structured and deeply attached to the idea of family. She’s an intern nurse, independent, resistant to conventions, and has never wanted to become a mother. Somehow, they love each other deeply enough to keep making those differences work. And there are a lot of differences to work through.
Lucia has had a messier life. She changes jobs easily, doesn’t feel particularly accepted by her future mother-in-law and, at the beginning of the film, doesn’t want to get married. She certainly doesn’t want to adopt a child.
Simone, meanwhile, comes from a large family and appears to know exactly what he wants: marriage, a child, and a family of his own.
The adoption process puts all of that under a microscope.
You, Me, Us Finds Its Strength in an Imperfect Relationship
What I particularly liked about You, Me, Us is that neither Simone nor Lucia is presented as having everything figured out.
At first, Lucia can seem like the difficult one. She’s reluctant to change her mind or compromise on things Simone considers important. But little by little, she does change. She agrees to marry him. She agrees to begin the adoption process. More importantly, there comes a point when she genuinely wants to adopt a child herself.
Simone’s certainty starts to look much less certain. He’s the one who wanted a family from the beginning, yet when he’s asked to go deeper and explain why he wants a child so badly, he struggles. As their therapist points out, he has a tendency to give the answers he thinks people want to hear rather than really examining what he feels.
Even some of Lucia’s smaller requests expose the imbalance between them. She doesn’t want to live so close to Simone’s family, for example, but he struggles to meet her there.
There are moments when you genuinely wonder whether these two people are right for each other. Yet that’s part of what makes their relationship interesting to watch. Their love doesn’t magically erase the differences between them, and the film doesn’t need them to become perfect versions of themselves before taking their relationship seriously.
The Adoption Story Goes Much Further Than the Process
Adoption is what pushes Simone and Lucia into some of their most difficult conversations, but the movie isn’t solely about whether they’ll be able to adopt a child. It’s about why they want the lives they say they want.
Lucia has to reconsider ideas about marriage, motherhood, and family that once seemed firmly settled. Simone has to question something more uncomfortable: whether wanting a traditional family is enough when he hasn’t really examined where that desire comes from.
You, Me, Us is a story about very ordinary people, and it can be raw at times. Simone and Lucia have flaws. Sometimes they try to hide those flaws from each other, their friends or their families. Sometimes they’re stubborn. Sometimes their problems make you question the relationship rather than root unquestioningly for it.
Above all, You, Me, Us is about real people: imperfect, complicated, full of contradictions and shades of gray. Simone and Lucia are like us.
The subject matter does come with a caveat. For anyone who has personally gone through adoption, particularly a difficult adoption process, parts of the movie could hit very close to home. It’s worth knowing that before watching.
The Standout
Anna Bonaiuto as Silvana Zappacosta. Bonaiuto is wonderful as the sexologist guiding Simone and Lucia through sessions both together and separately. Silvana seems capable of reading the two of them before they’ve even managed to explain themselves. Bonaiuto also finds small opportunities for comic relief, sometimes through a movement or a brief reaction, that make Silvana feel like a complete character instead of simply someone there to help move Simone and Lucia’s story forward.
The Final Take
You, Me, Us is a must-see example of what a very good Italian cast, director, and screenplay can do with a story that doesn’t need extraordinary circumstances to be compelling.
This is a comedy about everyday people. There’s romance, drama, and some comic relief, with adoption providing the central story without becoming the only thing the movie has to say.
Instead, the process opens the door to something broader: human emotions, relationships, family expectations, compromise, fear, and the uncomfortable questions people sometimes have to ask themselves about the lives they think they want.
Simone and Lucia aren’t perfect, and their relationship isn’t either. That’s precisely why their story feels worth spending time with.