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ROSALINE
Director: Karen Maine Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Sean Teale, Kyle Allen, Spencer Stevenson, Bradley Whitford, Minnie Driver, Christopher McDonald, Nico Hiraga, Alistair Toovey MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:36 Release Date: 10/14/22 (Hulu) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 13, 2022 One could argue that Rosaline, who serves as Romeo's first source for infatuation, is the most important character in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. She also doesn't matter, really, since she remains unseen and ends up entirely forgotten by the young lover once he meets his fated—and doomed—match. Rosaline, which re-imagines the famous tale of star-crossed lovers fully as a comedy and from the perspective of that vital but disregarded character of the movie's title, has a slightly different idea about her. She doesn't mean to shun Romeo before he meets his Juliet. Rosaline is young and, seemingly, just as in love with him as he is with her. Love can be scary when you're young, though, and things come up, you know. In screenwriters' Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber's telling (based on Rebecca Serle's novel When You Were Mine—although loosely, apparently, since the book is set in the present day), Rosaline ends up pining for Romeo in the same way we know of him pining for her during the beginning part of the play. This is a pretty solid concept, and it results here in a movie that begins and ends strongly, making Romeo's ex-girlfriend into an actual character with at least some influence over the story we know. At her best, Rosaline, as played by Kaitlyn Dever, is sympathetically wounded and strong-minded, navigating through her own troubles while occasionally outsmarting events of the plot that she, through no fault of her own, helped to instigate. There's some real ingenuity here in the way the screenwriters turn Rosaline into a character who is as important to the rest of the story as she is to its start. It's too bad the filmmakers aren't as convincing in giving the character her own, unique story through which to maneuver. Her story begins with a familiar scene. Romeo (Kyle Allen) has come to visit his secret love, a member of a rival family. She emerges from her bedroom to the balcony, and he waxes poetic about her beauty, comparing her to assorted celestial bodies. This, obviously is not Juliet, a different member of the rival family who shows up later, but Rosaline, whose name Romeo promises will connected to his as a romance of legend. Their love story goes wrong, of course, thanks to Rosaline's father (played by Bradley Whitford), who wants his daughter to marry a man of his choosing. On the day of the masquerade ball where she plans to meet Romeo and finally reciprocate his feelings for her, Rosaline ends up on a sailing expedition with Dario (Sean Teale), one of those suitors, who's charming and handsome enough that we suspect and fear exactly how Rosaline's story will play out when she isn't a part of that other story. Romeo meets Juliet (Isabela Merced), Rosaline's visiting cousin, and for them, the rest is destiny. That leaves Rosaline alone, quite miserable, and in a scheming mood to sabotage the other romance. While there's a playful cheekiness to the way Neustadter and Weber tease and twist our expectations in those opening scenes, the rest of this story—until it rebounds in the third act—becomes torn between subverting the story we already know and falling into a different formula in telling Rosaline's story. A bit of inspiration arrives when Rosaline tries to convince her love-struck cousin to keep an open mind about romance, bringing her to a local tavern to show her what she might be missing—and what Juliet might come to regret if she latches herself to a man whose affections are fickle. The latter, more formulaic approach ultimately wins out here, though. Rosaline and Dario keep meeting, keep bickering, and keep offering up looks of attraction and affection—all of them pointing Rosaline toward an existence that's mostly dependent upon which of these guys will win over her feelings in the end. Since the famous one's taken and on a path toward a certain fate, there's little guessing on that end. Far more enjoyable are the little details that connect to the other plot occurring in the background, such as the presence of a courier (played by Nico Hiraga), whose terrible execution of his job is a funny piece of dramatic irony for the misunderstandings to come. Then there's Paris (Spencer Stevenson), Rosaline's friend and Juliet's betrothed-to-be—although that second part is only a favor to his friend, since he has no interest in finding a wife. Minnie Driver plays the jilted lover's nurse, a more knowing and less patient counterpart to the one we know from Juliet's story. The story we know eventually comes to the foreground, and some of that initial promise about toying with Shakespeare's tale pays off as Rosaline tries to intervene in the lovers' ill-advised—to put it generously—plan. Rosaline, in the ways the filmmakers adjust and jokingly comment upon the no-longer-so-tragic plot as it's unfolding, and the eponymous character, by way of Dever's knowing performance, suddenly spring to life. It's too little, though, for a movie that, too late, figures out its purpose. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for some suggestive material and brief strong language)
