12/11/2013 - Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld are the stars in a version of the famous Shakespeare tale by Carlo Carlei

To speak about Romeo and Juliet [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Carlo Carlei, presented out of competition at the Rome International Film Festival, you need to consider its screenwriter, Julian Fellowes. The Oscar winner, acclaimed for his 2002 script of Gosford Park and hit television show Downton Abbey, wanted to give a traditional view of the romance to spectators. This meant medieval costumes, balconies and duals, in stark contrast to the 1996 Buz Luhrman version Romeo + Juliet, with Leonardo di Caprio and Claire Danes (one year beforeTitanic).

The two young stars playing the most famous and unfortunate of lovers to exist in collective popular imagination leaves no doubt to the type of audience sought out: a young North American crowd. The producer is Ileed Maisel of Amber Entertainment with her partners Italian Indiana with Gabriele Muccino, young American Echo Lake Productions  (Nebraska by Alexander Payne) and Swarovski Entertainment, participating in its first feature length film. British Douglas Booth who stars in television miniseries Pillars of the Earth as well as in the "social network obsessed movie" LOL, is Romeo to the Juliet of Californian Hailee Steinfeld who was the acclaimed Mattie Ross in Grit by the Coen brother and Petra Arkanian in Ender's Game.

The Luhrman film made $46 million in the United States alone, while the Carlei version made over $1 million in the United States in October and $400,000 in Britain. It will be difficult for the film to lift itself up in the rest of Europe. An alluring adaptation with a professional direction still comes across as flat and is accompanied by an uninspiring performance by the two main actors. And this despite them being in the company of excellent actors such as Damian Lewis, Lesley Manville, Christian Cooke, Natascha McElhone, Ed Westwick, Swedish Stellan Skarsgård who plays (in beautiful costumes by Carlo Poggioli) the Prince of Verona, young Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Paul Giamatti in the role of Lorenzo, whose effort to help the two lovers traps them into a deadly scenario resulting in the moving finale. 

(Translated from Italian)