Love in the Villa

But soft, what light from yonder TV breaks? A breezy, pleasing love story about star-crossed travelers that transcends Netflix's romantic recipes.

At one point, pragmatic Charlie points out that the balcony Julie is so enamored with did not in fact inspire the Bard — it was constructed later, in a calculated bid to attract tourists to fair Verona. She even gets to do some fun physical comedy (the restaurant scene where she’s awkwardly trying to suck wine out of a straw is a glorious highlight). [Tom Hopper](https://variety.com/t/tom-hopper/)), who’s in town for business at the annual wine festival, has booked the place for the exact same week. Johnson — who previously delivered another genial rom-com for the streamer (“Love, Guaranteed”) — and his collaborators gift the picture with a bright effervescence, not just in the material’s jovial jests but also in its crafty construction. [Kat Graham](https://variety.com/t/kat-graham/)), who is obsessed with “Romeo and Juliet,” has planned the trip of a lifetime with her boyfriend of four years, Brandon (Raymond Ablack). [Love in the Villa](https://variety.com/t/love-in-the-villa/)” yearns for an authentic, romantic Italian vacation since her fairy tale has been cobbled together by Netflix’s practically patented algorithm.

As Julie plans her trip to Verona with her boyfriend, Brandon, he decides to break up with her. The film uses the typical rom-com formula of strangers turned ...

She knew he was a romantic, and that was what brought him to the villa. Charlie was surprised to learn that Julie was back with her ex-lover. Julie left the villa, and Charlie followed her, but she refused to listen to his explanation. Charlie was informed by a colleague that a room in a hotel was now empty, and he could shift there, but he decided to stay the night at the villa. That evening, when Brandon and Julie went to a restaurant, Cassie recognized Julie and invited them to join them for dinner. Julie informed the police that a man had tried to break into her apartment, and Charlie was taken into custody for the night. Since Julie was not affluent in the Italian language, Charlie explained that he used horse meat to make the dish. When a courier service was returning Julie’s luggage from the airport, he stopped the man and informed him that Julie no longer lived at the villa and was sent to a mental institute for recovery. “Love in the Villa” is about Julia’s solo trip to Verona, and the love she finds in the process. He agreed to share the villa with Julie, though he regretted his decision the very next day. But as she entered the villa, she stumbled upon a man who claimed to have booked the villa on the same days that she did. Since he had arrived first, he had claimed the bed, and Julie was offered a sofa to rest on until the owner solved the issue.

Kat Graham and Tom Hopper display abbondanza chemistry in Netflix's familiar but fun European vacation film.

Subtract the latter’s fantasy element and it shares a lot in common with this one. In which case, if you’re looking for a fun, entertaining night in front of the TV with your loved one, check out Love In The Villa. Not to spoil the movie, but this fairy tale has got to have a happy ending. So she heads off to Verona alone, arriving at the villa only to face another surprise: due to a mix-up, the place is double-booked, and Julie must share it with Charlie, a tall, handsome, but insensitive Brit. And there’s a food fight, a supportive gay friend, endless Romeo & Juliet references (including Juliet’s house, the famous balcony, the iconic statue, the wall of love letters, and the locks of love), a drool-worthy montage of glorious delicacies, flyby shots of famous landmarks, visits to a winery, coins tossed in a fountain, an impossibly beautiful estate, surprise visits from unexpected characters—and more. [Love In The Villa](https://www.avclub.com/film/reviews/love-in-the-villa-2022).

Mark Steven Johnson's Love in the Villa is the perfect evidence of Netflix's alarming propensity to turn movies into assembly-line products.

Mughal women contributed a lot to the Mughal Empire. Love in the Villa in that sense, manages to only be passable. A part of that reason could be attributed to the choices that Johnson, who previously helmed Love, Guaranteed (2020), another Netflix rom-com, employs for this film. Both Julie and Charlie appear as thinly-sketched caricatures, partly because in his bid to tell the audience everything, Johnson neglects to show the viewers who these two people really are, preventing us from getting invested in their fates. I say that only because Love in the Villa resembles the rom-com equivalent of a tourist trap. On their parts, Graham and Hopper feel well-suited for their respective roles, in the sense that they pass the "impossibly good looks" criteria crucial to any self-respecting rom. But it's merely a red herring, given that the film's most reliable catchphrase translates to "love finds a way." Still, I'd chalk down the insipidness of the rom-com down to the weak characterization of its two leads. Mark Steven Johnson's Love in the Villa is the perfect evidence of Netflix's alarming propensity to turn movies into assembly-line products. The choice of destination isn't random; it is after all, the setting of Romeo and Juliet, which as per Julie is "the most romantic and tragic love story of all time." In that, it turns out to be the kind of movie that is effortlessly convincing as an endorsement for Italy as a vacation destination more than it makes a case for romance. Like all romantic comedies go, the plot is wafer-thin: Julie (Graham), a third-grade teacher, Romeo-Juliet connoisseur, and anxious planner is unceremoniously dumped by Brandon (Raymond Ablack), her boyfriend of four years right before their trip to Verona, Italy.

Where was Love in the Villa filmed? Kat Graham's Netflix movie takes place in Verona, Italy, but here are the actual filming locations.

As for that gorgeous picnic scene featuring Julie and Charlie wining and dining on a rocky coastline, that was filmed at Lake Garda, the largest lake in Itlay, which is located to the west of Verona. Love in the Villa was filmed on location in Verona, Italy, which is the city famous for being the setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. My favorite location we filmed was the balcony of Juliet’s House. [The Cinemaholic](https://thecinemaholic.com/where-was-netflixs-love-in-the-villa-filmed/), some of the key filming locations in Verona included many squares, or piazzas, as the Italians would say. (As Charlie mentions in the movie, the balcony was added after Shakespeare wrote the play, for tourists.) And because Love in the Villa was filmed on location, neither will the audience.

Love in the Villa, currently streaming on Netflix, is a generic and forgettable rom-com that romances a heap of cliches.

And if you ask me, “Was Love in the Villa everything you hoped for?” I would scream a resounding no at the top of my lungs. The sights and sound of the breezy and pleasant Italian love corner capture the touristy universe in a microcosm and serves as nothing but a marketing flyer for Verona. Love in the Villa is a generic and easily forgettable film that allures you with a whiff of romance and comedy now and then but becomes dull and insipid after a point of time. Love in the Villa lacks originality and freshness in its wafer-thin plot, depthless characters, and cursory and foreseen turn of events. She even goes to the extent of laminating her itinerary and even allocates a sliver of vacation time for “spontaneity.” But when Brandon gets cold feet and breaks up with her unceremoniously, she ventures on a solo trip rather than brood and mope in Minneapolis. Love in the Villa (2022) follows the story of elementary school teacher Julie (Kat Graham), an overachiever and a perfectionist, and a hopeless romantic at heart obsessed with Romeo and Juliet.

A breezy, pleasing love story about star-crossed travelers that transcends Netflix's romantic recipes.

[enamored](https://www.pinkvilla.com/entertainment/hollywood/sofia-carson-1184377) of was actually built later, in a deliberate attempt to draw tourists to charming Verona, as pragmatic Charlie explains at one point. The film is given a brilliant effervescence by Johnson and his team, who previously provided another amusing rom-com for the streamer ("Love, Guaranteed"), not merely in the material's cherry jests but also in its deft production. The two are forced to live together because the erratic owner of the apartment (Emilio Solfrizzi) offers them no recourse and there is no other place for them to reside. With their chemistry and intrinsic likeability that is as appealing as it is entertaining, he and Graham create rooting interest. The location has been reserved for the exact same week by ruthless wine merchant Charlie (Tom Hopper), who is in town for the annual wine festival on business. But the happy surprise that awaits even the most pessimistic viewers of romantic comedy from writer-director Mark Steven Johnson is that the manufactured product contains a comforting appeal to its reasonable delight.

Come fall in love with "Love in the Villa," the latest on Netflix, its protagonists, Julie and Charlie, and most importantly, its filming location, ...

The views expressed here are that of the respective authors/ entities and do not represent the views of Economic Times (ET). Verona is in the Northern part of Italy, particularly on the western side of Venice, and popular among lovers for its charm. This is mainly because that was the first visit to Verona for all of them. So, it is not surprising that [Julie](/topic/julie), the protagonist of the comedy, is so much in awe of Verona. Kat Graham is playing the character of Julie, and she was forced to visit Verona alone after her boyfriend dumped her! Huddleston and Stephanie Slack – two producers of this romantic drama, reported that not only the characters but all the members of the shooting unit were awestruck by Verona during the shooting.

The Netflix rom-com is happy to be a glorified tourism advert.

The statues in Verona have more chemistry with the bees than the two leads have with each other. He sends back her luggage from the airline and convinces them to sell her clothes to orphans, which in turn lets Julie dress like an Italian model for the rest of the film. When Julie gets dumped in the beginning, I expected her to discover that romance is a tourist trap in the ultimate city of love, Verona. The cobblestones have more personality than the characters. The initial parts – where both of them try to get rid of each other by playing juvenile tricks – are difficult to watch; even the actors (Kat Graham and Tom Hopper) look uncomfortable. But no, Julie is missing an alphabet, so the only subversion is that she finds a super-fit man who cooks for her. They’re the actions of two budding sociopaths. Note the title: Love in the Villa. It’s a tale older than Shakespeare, designed to capture the imagination of Mills-and-Boons-loving pre-teens from 1992 who grow up to defend Serendipity over Notting Hill. In fact, she has no right to exist otherwise. For a hot minute, I thought of the Hindi film Queen, which starred Kangana Ranaut back in 2015, and told a far more progressive story about a woman finding herself after going on a solo honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam. They feature performances that strive to be generic and forgettable.

Netflix film Love in the Villa, stars Laura Hopper, Tom Hopper, and Kat Graham, and follows Julie, fresh from her break up with Brandon, embarking on her dream ...

The pair are antagonistic for no real reason, except to give us a reason to keep watching, and the reality of the situation is that this pair of beautiful people would gravitate towards each other, not try to get rid of each other. Will Brandon and Cassie hit it off, or will Julie and Charlie finally see the writing on the wall and become their very own Romeo and Juliet? A development that is only a surprise to the two characters themselves. However a compromise is reached and Julie heads out to try and follow her own holiday plans, with disastrous results. The film places the viewer squarely in its sights, with an opening of Julie reading Romeo and Juliet to her class of pupils, and longing to visit Verona, to find Juliet’s balcony. Undeterred, Julie makes her way to her accommodation, not what she expected, and finds the door to her villa is open, and a handsome stranger, Charlie Fletcher, is already booked in.