The upcoming dark comedy I Don’t Understand You is the kind of movie you could easily see playing it literally straight.
It follows a couple who, on the verge of adopting a baby together, decide to take one last (childless) trip together to Italy, only for their romantic getaway to take many, many turns for the worse.
Sounds intriguing enough on its own, but I Don’t Understand You gives the vacation-gone-wrong genre a fresh new spin by centering its story on a pair of gay fathers-to-be.
In this case that’s Cole (Andrew Rannells) and Dom (Nick Kroll), upwardly mobile husbands with a seemingly picture-perfect life who have everything arranged to adopt from a chipper pregnant woman (Amanda Seyfried) already nearing her due date.
Before they become daddies, the two embark on a “babymoon” trip to Italy, where a family friend has set them up to have an intimate, rustic, authentic Italian dining experience in the remote countryside.
Despite their comforts and privileges, Cole & Dom—like many gay men their age—are old enough to remember an all-too-recent time where they couldn’t get married or legally adopt a kid together, so they’re still a bit defensive and extra wary of homophobia, and that goes especially for when they’re in Italy, where neither can speak the native language.
That becomes a real issue when they arrive at the home of their host and chef Francesca (The White Lotus star Eleonora Romandini), whose warmth and openness isn’t exactly understood with the language barrier. And after a series of events leave them stranded there in a storm, without cell service, it’s not long before this dream trip becomes a catastrophe.
We’d say this next part is a spoiler, though it is in the trailer, so… Once an accident has the couple panicked, their attempts to cover their tracks only digs the two deeper, further complicated by the arrival of Francesca’s brusque, imposing adult son Massimo (The Gilded Age zaddy Morgan Spector).
