Rosaline (Karen Maine, 2022)

Rosaline (Karen Maine, 2022)

Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Sean Teale, Kyle Allen, Spencer Stevenson, Bradley Whitford, Christopher McDonald, Minnie Driver, Nico Hiraga. Screenplay: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber, based on a novel by Rebecca Serle. Cinematography: Laurie Rose. Production design: Andrew McAlpine. Film editing: Jennifer Lee. Music: Drum & Lace, Ian Hultquist. 

Rosaline is an amusing trifle, an exercise in parashakespeare like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard, 1990) or Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998), though I’m sure neither screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber nor Rebecca Serle, the author of the book on which Rosaline is based, would be eager to invite comparison with Stoppard’s erudition and wit. In Romeo and Juliet, Rosaline is only a plot device: Juliet’s cousin, with whom Romeo is infatuated, she’s never seen in the play, but serves only, via the teasing of his friends, to emphasize Romeo’s bent toward romantic ardor. The film casually turns the play on its head, converting tragedy into rom-com, as Kaitlyn Dever’s Rosaline gets her revenge on Romeo’s fickleness by trying to make him fall out of love with Juliet. Dever is a fine comic actress, and she gets good support from the rest of the cast. Kyle Allen, looking a bit like Heath Ledger in another parashakespearean movie, 10 Things I Hate About You (Gil Junger, 1999), plays Romeo as a lovestruck goof. His Juliet (Isabela Merced) is a faux naïf from the country, who manages to get the upper hand on the manipulative Rosaline. (There’s a mid-credits scene at the end that suggests things will not go smoothly for Romeo and Juliet after they escape Verona by means of a fake death.) Bradley Whitford plays Rosaline’s father, determined to marry off his independent-minded daughter. After a series of superannuated suitors whom Rosaline manages to scare off, he comes up with the handsome young Dario (Sean Teale), whom she initially rejects, but everyone who has ever seen a rom-com knows she will eventually fall for. There are nice comic bits from Spencer Stevenson as Paris, Rosaline’s gay best friend who gets roped into an engagement with Juliet, and Nico Hiraga as Steve the Courier, a stoner who delivers – or fails to deliver – the crucial messages that in the original play would precipitate tragedy. And while Juliet’s nurse plays a key role in Shakespeare, she’s only a bit part in the movie. Instead, there’s Minnie Driver as Rosaline’s nurse, indignantly insisting that she’s a trained registered nurse, not a babysitter. The screenplay wisely jettisons any attempt to evoke Shakespearean language and adopts contemporary speech that jars amusingly with the period setting and costumes. Director Karen Maine keeps all this fluff nicely airborne.