Rosaline by 20th Century Studios and 21 Laps Entertainment (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rosalineby 20th Century Studios and 21 Laps Entertainment Austen Bell RosalineProduced by 20th Century Studios and 21 Laps Entertainment, streaming on Hulu from 1410 2022. Directed by Karen Maine. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Cinematography by Laurie Rose. Production design by Andrew McAlpine. Costume design by Mitchell Travers. With Kaitlyn Dever (Rosaline), Isabela Merced (Juliet), Sean Teale (Dario Penza), Kyle Allen (Romeo), Spencer Stevenson (Paris), Bradley Whitford (Adrian Capulet), Minnie Driver (Nurse Janet), and others. Shakespeare's plays abound in anachronism. Julius Caesarhas its striking clock, Falstaff sings his broadside ballads, and some purported ancient Greeks and Romans are quite Christian in their theology. Karen Maine's 2022 romantic comedy Rosaline, the story of "Romeo's ex," commits to this extremely Shakespearean tradition. Kaitlyn Dever's Rosaline in particular almost seems to be looking through time; with the assumptions, goals, and expectations of a twenty-first century romantic comedy heroine, she sees the Italian Renaissance aesthetic around her as restrictive and foolish. When this juxtaposition functions to connecthistory and modernity, it is playful and engaging. Too often, however, it's difficult to justify Rosaline's light-hearted chronological snobbery; the film sets up the cynical, postmodernist romantic comedy as the solution to the problems of an overly-emotional Elizabethan tragedy, yet fails to deal with what is problematic within the romcom genre. Rosalinefollows the titular Rosaline, a Capulet and an aspiring cartographer, through the end of her relationship with Romeo Montague (Kyle Allen). Her friends Paris (Spencer Stevenson) and Nurse Janet (Minnie Driver) suspect that she is only interested in Romeo because of the danger, but she never seriously doubts her commitment until the first time Romeo tells her he loves her, when she freezes. He takes her silence as rejection, heads off to the Capulet ball, meets Rosaline's cousin Juliet (Isabela Merced), and promptly falls in love. When Rosaline sees him climbing Juliet's balcony just the way he climbed hers—even echoing some of his poetic words—she decides to win him back by befriending [End Page 297]Juliet and exposing Romeo's fickleness (though without revealing herself as the former object of his affections). But Rosaline's plan has three complications: firstly, her genuine growing attachment to Juliet; secondly, the presence of inconveniently attractive young soldier Dario Penza (Sean Teale); and thirdly, the plot of Romeo and Julietoccurring in the background. Rosaline's primary relationship to its source material is one of setup and subversion. In the opening scene Romeo, clinging to the balcony railing and gazing into the distance, rhapsodizes, "I never saw true beauty till this night. …" Rosaline, trying to follow his gaze with her eyes, responds, "Why are you talking like that?" This comment is enough to move the language of the rest of the movie into contemporary vernacular. Similarly, initial dialogue between Romeo and Rosaline gives only Romeo's name; this opening sequence, structured like Shakespeare's second act balcony scene, contains proclamations from the lovers that their story will be told "for centuries"—at which point a call from within reveals that the heroine is Rosaline and not Juliet. In this way the film presumes familiarity with Romeo and Julietand its status as an enduring and important love story; further, it sets up its central character as the primary subverter of the play and its status. A consistent characteristic of the romantic comedy, and often its strongest, is its centrally female perspective. Surrounded by incompetents and weirdos, the romcom heroine tends to play the sprecher(to use a word from White 179), or Only Sane Woman (as TV Tropes would have it). The audience is meant to look through her eyes, seeing her reactions and goals as rational and important, and the reactions and goals of other characters as absurd and trivial. This is certainly distinct from many other genres of popular film, not to mention from the generally male-centric plays of Shakespeare, and Rosalinedelights in the contrast of its heroine and its source material. Every time Rosaline encounters a Romeo and Julietstory beat, the film privileges herreaction and analysis. Romeo and Juliet may...