Saved by the belle, page 2

It takes a special kind of idiot to screw up a "Romeo and Juliet" starring two of the most perfectly cast leads in the history of the movies -- but then, Baz Luhrmann isn't your garden-variety idiot. The problem isn't that Luhrmann dared to update "Romeo and Juliet": the movie is set in Verona Beach, a present day neverland city whose dual nature is reflected by seedy seaside amusement parks and heat-blasted streets lined with "Metropolis"-style skyscrapers. The feuding dads, Capulet and Montague, have become bigwig captains of industry. The problem is that Luhrmann's flashy universe rings hollow. It leaves you yearning for the kind of familiar but enchanted world Jacques Demy built for his star-crossed lovers in "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," a city alive to its characters' joy and heartbreak instead of bearing down on them like a gloomy, glitzy fortress. A few of Luhrmann's choices are clever: the crucial letter Friar Lawrence sends to the exiled Romeo is entrusted to an overnight-delivery-service guy who slaps a "Sorry we missed you" sticker on Romeo's door. And there's Catholic iconography -- Virgin Mary statues with eyes cast heavenward, Jesuses sporting bloody sacred hearts -- everywhere; it may not mean much, but it sure looks good. For the most part, though, Luhrmann piles on plenty of sub-Fellini excess and stale gay camp like so many layers of old greasepaint. Worse, he's obsessed with rapid-fire cuts and aggressive close-ups that end up swallowing chunks of dialogue whole. (The movie's first 20 minutes play like an endless, incomprehensible trailer.) Luhrmann's new, improved Mercutio (now a black drag queen) gets an overdone "Queen Mab" speech that ends up sounding like something out of "Go Ask Alice" (he's offering Romeo a hit of acid as he delivers it), and his death speech is cut to ribbons. The scene in which Juliet learns of Tybalt's death at Romeo's hands has been zapped; we never get to see how her grief over her cousin's death evolves into her almost ruthless devotion to her husband. But somehow, Luhrmann doesn't spoil DiCaprio and Danes's love scenes -- by some miraculous turn, he has the good sense to stay out of the way as they go to work. DiCaprio and Danes's first moments together are breathtaking. They catch sight of each other through an aquarium filled with luminous, brilliant-colored fish that swim back and forth like miniature, hopeful promises. Their first exchange is unspoken: she pretends to walk away and then doubles back, unable to resist checking him out; he arches an eyebrow. Within seconds, they've not only pledged themselves to each other for life, they've also made a date to get into bed as soon as humanly possible. They know as well as we do -- and as well as any junior high-schooler who's ever been entranced by the play -- that "Romeo and Juliet" is about both poetic, undying love and the promise of great sex. DiCaprio isn't a perfect Romeo. His line readings are sometimes strained and squeaky, and particularly in his scenes with his pals, he gets sucked into the movie's endless, busy cross-cutting and loses his center. He also overemotes: his cries of anguish after he slays Tybalt are too reminiscent of the bratty junkie he played in "The Basketball Diaries." But DiCaprio's sensitive-soul self-consciousness disappears in his scenes with Danes: with her, he's the half that completes the whole. His shambling eagerness at the beginning -- the way he bounds up the trellis in the balcony scene, an irrepressible monkey-boy -- makes him all the more moving at the end. As he cradles his wife, whom he believes is dead, he can't stop his tears: at the moment he most needs to act like a man, he betrays that he feels like nothing so much as a bereft child. By that time, we've fallen as hard for Danes' Juliet as he has, so it's easy to understand his despair. Calling Danes the most magical movie Juliet ever isn't saying much, since the competition consists mostly of deadbeats like Olivia Hussey. By the time most actresses have the training and the experience to perform Shakespeare "properly," they have to work doubly hard to make you believe they're 14. It's no small stroke of luck that in Danes we have an actress who brings Juliet to life by instinct and sheer will alone. You might find a Juliet with better locution, but you couldn't find one with more warmth or passion. Her performance is like the flickering flame of a votive candle, delicate yet persistent. For all her subtlety, Danes isn't a fragile Juliet. As soon as she meets Romeo, you can see her suddenly coming alive to the possibilities of adult passion: when she looks at him, her eyes wide and bright, she seems to be drinking him in. Juliet isn't a terribly complex character, but she isn't a ridiculous one, either. In the course of the story, her silly adolescent eagerness is overtaken by an almost scary resolve to love beyond all reason; the battalion of dolls lined up on a shelf in her bedroom at first seem an expression of her girlish innocence, but after she meets Romeo they're remote and meaningless. Danes makes the shift with easy grace. Behind the tenderness of her line readings, she reveals Juliet's tenaciousness. Danes and DiCaprio together are so vivid that they seem to be trapped in the wrong movie. But in the midst of all the mess, they build a life for their characters that lingers long after the screen goes dark -- in fact, Romeo and Juliet seem more alive than ever. In Shakespeare's play, the two lovers are strangers in their own families; in "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet," they're exiles in their own movie. But once the last credits have rolled, they're free agents at last: they can haunt our dreams if they want to, and we're powerless to do anything but let them in.