Julie Hutton follows her lifelong dream to visit romantic Verona, Italy, shortly after a breakup, only to find her reserved villa is double-booked, so she has to share it with a cynical British man.
The film was released on Netflix on September 1st, 2022.
Plot
Third-grade teacher Julie Hutton is fascinated with Verona as it is the setting for William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In an effort to explain why she is so excited for the trip, she unsuccessfully tries to expose them to the centuries-old love story.
Later on, Julie goes over in great deal the itinerary she has planned out for the long-awaited trip to Verona with her boyfriend Brandon of four years. Overwhelmed, he abruptly ends their relationship in the restaurant.
Julie therefore finds herself traveling alone for what she had hoped would be a week of romance. After an uncomfortable flight in economy class, her bags are lost and she has a stressful taxi ride with Uberto.
On arrival at the reserved villa, Julie finds it has been double-booked as it was accidentally advertised on two diffferent apartment-sharing sites. Silvio the owner suggests she share the place with the wine expert, as the annual Vinitaly European wine expo is monopolozing the housing availability. He waves it off as their destiny, L'amore troverà una via.
Julie hurries to follow her jam-packed itinerary, but soon is forced to toss it. Feeling dejected, she returns to the villa to find Charlie has read her personal journal. He equates going back to an ex as putting on dirty underwear after showering, then she promptly hangs up an attempted call from Brandon.
Charlie explains his job with a UK wine importer, in which he must get exclusivity rights on wines cheaply to maximize their profits. Soon after, Julie discovers his extreme allergies when street cats come pouring in when cracking a window. When she complains about him on the phone to her friend Rob, he suggests she drive him out.
Julie buys lots of green olives, a known attraction to cats, then surrounds Charlie with them, opening the window. He wakes covered in welts and in pain, and shortly 'delares war' on her. As Charlie is leaving the apartment, he comes across her bags being delivered from the airline. He sends them back, declaring she was institutionalized and wants them donated.
Julia retaliates by getting the locks changed, then contacts the police to report Charlie as a thief. He is jailed, coming back even angrier. His response comes in creating a very public shrine with bits from her diary about her Brandon breakup. Charlie seemingly calls a truce, then offers to share a meal with her. He prepares pastissada de caval, a typical dish of Verona. When Julie discovers it is horse, they end up in a food fight.
The police are contacted when the commotion reaches the plaza below. Warned they will get overnight jail time if they again disrupt the peace, Charlie later apologizes to Julia for all. He admits he substituted portabello mushrooms for the horse, and they spend the evening getting drunk on wine.
Walking around town, Julie makes a wish at the Fontana Madonna Verona, then takes them to the bronze statue of Juliet where they both make wishes. The next day, she takes Charlie on the Juliet tour, so he can see it from eyes of romantics. Julie reveals her excessively romantic parents caused her to set the bar so high, he explains he grew up with four brothers and no mother.
That evening, at the Vinitalia event, Julie lets Carlo Caruso know how divine his wine is, inadvertently blocking Charlie's company's offer. Evenso, Charlie asks her to dance, they almost kiss but he stops them. Arriving back at the villa, his fiancée Cassie is there to surprise him, which takes him aback as they were on a break.
Brandon shows up in the morning, so in the evening he and Julie end up getting invited to share a table with Cassie and Charlie. Julie gets horribly drunk so they leave. Then Charlie breaks up with Cassie, follows the others, inadvertently seeing Brandon propose.
What Charlie misses is her rejection of it. Silvio convinces him to track down Julie. When he does, they both realize they have fallen in love.
Ryan Shore composed the original score for the film.
Release
The film was released on September 1, 2022 on Netflix.
Reception
Love in the Villa mostly received negative reviews from film critics. It holds a 33% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 reviews.[1] Prateek Sur of Outlook India gave it a rating of 2/5.[2] Adrian Horton of Guardian also gave it a rating of 2/5 and calls it an "immediately forgettable Netflix romcom."[3]
Awards and nominations
Ryan Shore received a 2023 Music+Sound Awards Best Original Feature Score nomination. [4]
This movie was nominated for the Best Music Supervision for a Non-Theatrically Released Film at 13th Annual Guild of Music Supervisors Awards.[5]
