La Dolce Villa: (Caroline Ho) In a long series of
relatively low-budget romantic comedies on streaming services, 2025's
La Dolce Villa is fairly unremarkable but still managed to draw
significant audiences on Netflix early in the year. It tells the story
of an everyday, metro-sophisticated American guy in his 50's who has
lost his wife and runs restaurants. He travels to Italy to reunite with
his 20-something daughter, the ulterior motive being his concern that
the girl is wastefully spending her inheritance. As the two attempt to
bond, they are drawn to Italy's recent law allowing abandoned villas to
be sold for a single Euro so that they can be revitalized. They do
exactly that and form a variety of relationships with the Italian locals
that will inevitably shape their lives to come. (The father, of course,
has to get involved with the lovely female mayor of the town because,
well, that's what happens in these movies.) With a dose of home
improvement and culinary adventures alongside the scenery in its plot,
La Dolce Villa attracted bored wintertime viewers to its shallow
but predictably satisfying conclusion. Sprinkled into the film is an
original score by young composer Caroline Ho, who had been a ghostwriter
for Marco Beltrami and has branched off into a bevy of short film and
streaming romantic comedy assignments in the 2020's. Her involvement
here stems from a collaboration with director Mark Waters that extends
from 2024's similarly postured
Mother of the Bride on Netflix as
well. Waters had utilized workhorse comedy and drama composer Rolfe Kent
for many of his prior projects, and Ho steps into those shoes with a
little less variability in her recordings but certainly with adequate
results for these projects. Ho generally specializes in piano and
strings, and her approach to
La Dolce Villa is similar in tone
and scope to that for
Mother of the Bride but with some of the
keyboarding and synthetic elements replaced by strings and
Italian-centric accents. The instrumentation in the 2025 score mainly
consists of a string section in layers with keyboards, harp, and
acoustic guitar, joined by very subtle mandolin tones in a few cues.
Aside from a handful of extroverted, source-like cues, the region's
instrumental potential doesn't factor, the rest of the score's romance
and drama sadly anonymous to a fault. Most of the cues could represent a
story set in any typical American locale.
Ho's strategy for
La Dolce Villa alternates
between contemporary jazz and ethnic Italian tones on the flashy side
and those really conservative rom-com atmospheres on the other. The
former group of cues provides the spark of life, including the
source-like jazz band in "Arrivederci (At the Hotel)" with vibraphone,
accordion, and mandolin. This Italian material in "Cucina di Maltese"
persists for the same group, with string bass highlighted. Clapping
joins the ensemble in "Montezara" for another positive moment while
foot-tapping is added for the culminating "Becoming a Montezaran." On
the score's other, majority side, there isn't much to get excited about,
with no significant romantic depth whatsoever and no adversity in the
music at any point. (Prickly plucked comedy in "Leone Family" is as
confrontational as it gets.) There is a main theme, but it's neither
memorable nor well enunciated. Built on whimsical, five-note phrases
defined by their first two ascending notes, Ho highlights the idea on
light strings at 0:43 on "All Roads Lead to Rome," the fullest rendition
at 1:04 with rambling piano underneath. The theme emerges in the middle
of "Leone Family" after the infusion of fussiness while the first two
notes stutter late in "Chart This New Land" and are barely intact in the
subdued middle of "The Fat Bear." The theme is slow to develop on hints
of the jazz elements at the start of "Ti Amo" and becomes fragmented in
"Two Bicycles" during its very affable but passionless light drama
propulsion. The vibraphone barely touches upon it in "Sorry for the Time
We Missed," though the theme appreciably flourishes in the middle of
"Montezara" over the regional material. It flutters without much
substance early in "Kitchen Plans," barely factors in the middle of the
mostly ambient "North Star," and overtakes the regional instrumentation
early in "Becoming a Montezaran," where it is later expressed in a slow,
romantic mood by the accordion, guitar and mandolin. Secondary thematic
material doesn't congeal but offers pleasantries in the first half of
"Chart This New Land," vaguely upbeat enthusiasm in "The Villa," and
some noodling in "Garden Goodbyes" that presents a more modern tone of
hazy wash to the score. Overall, there's nothing offensive about any of
it, but there's also nothing remarkable about it, either. The cues are
presented out of film order on the 24-minute album release, placing the
thematic highlights at the start and end. Some listeners may find the
source-like, Italian-flavored interludes to be attractive, but the
romantic portions have little warmth or character. A composer's paycheck
earned.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: **
There exists no official packaging for this album.
