Rosaline

A comedy set in Verona. Rosaline is of the Capulet family. She is meeting Romeo in secret. It is going well. She is thinking about marriage. One night she cannot get to their meeting. Her father has brought her a suitor and she has to stay for dinner. Romeo waits in the garden. That night he meets Rosaline's cousin Juliet. From there the film watches the known story from the side. The balcony, the secret marriage, the exile and the potion; all of it is there but not at the centre. Rosaline tries to intervene. She befriends Juliet, wants to talk her out of it, and every move makes things worse. The suitor's line continues. Dario seems uninterested, is calm, and sees through her games from the start. What the narrative is interested in is not love but jealousy: its idea is that her effort to save Juliet is really an effort to get Romeo back, and that she is the last to notice. The language is deliberately contemporary. The characters talk like people today and the narrative uses that as a source of jokes. The costumes and settings are faithful to the period. That contrast sets the whole tone. The ending departs from the play and the narrative builds its own resolution. The source is Rebecca Serle's novel When You Were Mine. Kaitlyn Dever plays the part with a dry humour and the rhythm depends almost entirely on her. Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Kyle Allen, Sean Teale, Minnie Driver and Bradley Whitford are in the cast. Karen Maine directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes contemporary rereadings of classic texts and light comedy. Who it is not for: anyone expecting fidelity; the narrative lightens the play on purpose and carries none of the tragedy's weight.