With the release of Crazy Rich Asians and Netflix’s Set It Up earlier this summer, the rom-com is suddenly back in style. Director Jesse Peretz’s new film, Juliet, Naked keeps that resurgence going. Adapted from Nick Hornby’s novel of the same name by Evgenia Perez, Jim Taylor and Tamara Jenkins, the movie is a witty, quietly romantic film that’s so benign it almost becomes boring. Still, while Juliet, Naked is mostly a pleasant rom-com about two likable people, it’s also a pretty sharp examination of the ways people connect online—both good and bad.
Representing the bad is Chris O’Dowd’s Duncan. He’s the kind of douche-y fanboy who wrote a dissertation called “American Cinema and the Alienated Male” in college and wields his fandom and expertise like a weapon. Even with only one album in American singer Tucker Cole’s (Ethan Hawke) catalogue, Duncan lives, sleeps and breathes Tucker’s music and you can tell how much his girlfriend Annie (Rose Byrne) hates him for it. It’s hard to blame her.
Duncan constantly over-talks, mansplains and only gives her what she later characterizes as, “faint, conditional affection.” You learn everything you need to know about their relationship early on when, already angry that Annie has listened to the previously-unreleased demo recordings of Tucker’s album without him, Duncan storms into their bedroom complaining she always uses all the batteries when he can’t find any to play the CD in his old Walkman. She, no longer, in an apologetic mood, removes the batteries from the vibrator already in her hand and hurls them at him without a word.
It’s unsurprising, then, that Annie first passive-aggressively leaves a negative comment on Duncan’s site (where he notes, “We don’t get a lot of lady writers”) and then starts up a correspondence with Tucker himself after he agrees with her comment. Like a modern day You’ve Got Mail, their correspondence represents the good side of online interactions. They’re frank in a way only distance and a degree of anonymity can afford. They comfort each other over her terrible relationship with Duncan and his strained relationship with his various children, most from different women across the world.
The cleverest moment, though, comes when they meet. Real life can disappoint when an online relationship is as open and intense as what Annie and Tucker share and their first meeting is a total disaster. After an unexpected emergency derails their initial plans, they’re forced to meet in the London hospital where Tucker’s oldest daughter just had her baby and Annie is introduced to Tucker’s messy family dynamics at the same time as Tucker himself. It’s cringe comedy at its best and Hawke and Byrne play it with the perfect amount of embarrassment and yearning. Duncan and Tucker’s music is the reason for their meet cute, but Hawke and Byrne’s subtle chemistry is what keeps it going.
Speaking of Tucker’s music, though it drives the plot, we don’t hear too much of it. Some plays over the awful montage of Tucker’s career Duncan made for his website and most of a song plays while Annie tries to warn him about the CD, but we don’t really hear a full song. Though there’s always the soundtrack, it’s a shame the audience doesn’t get to hear more since Peretz assembled an impressive songwriting team that includes Ryan Adams, Robyn Hitchcock and Conor Oberst. However, while we don’t get to hear Tucker perform one of his own songs, we do get to hear him sing The Kinks’ “Waterloo Station” during an even at Annie’s museum.
Considering Tucker hasn’t performed publicly in at least two decades by that point, you’d assume he’d put up more of a fight when a drunken town member introduces him or at least show a bit more agitation while he plays, but that moment is unexpectedly chill and much of the movie unfolds in the same way.
One of the most enjoyable things about Juliet, Naked is the way it constantly subverts rom-com conventions. Every moment that should spell high drama unfolds in an understated way that feels grounded in reality. There’s the aforementioned first in-person meeting. There’s Duncan’s cheating, which would usually be revealed in the third act to make Annie realize she’s chosen the wrong man but is revealed in the film’s first half. There’s the build-up to Tucker’s conversation with the mysterious Grace, which emphasizes that just because a person is the protagonist of one story doesn’t mean they’re the protagonist of all stories. Tucker’s daughter Lizzie (Ayoola Smart) doesn’t even go into labor onscreen.
At nearly every turn, the film goes for the less dramatic choice and while it leaves the audience with a relatively stress-free, pleasant experience, it can also leave the story a little lacking in conflict. Annie and Tucker’s romance is certainly compelling, but the real concern here is whether they can get their lives together enough to be happy and that’s not easy to take on in under two hours.
Still, while Juliet, Naked may not be the most dramatic film ever made, its aversion to confrontation is exactly what makes it the perfect watch for a lazy summer afternoon. It’s the kind of thing that should play on low volume in the background while you read or eat lunch with all the windows open. If you want to ignore it, you can. If you don’t, you’ll be rewarded with a brutal critique of fandom and an examination of all the ways the internet allows people to connect. Add in an unconventional romance and some decent music and it’s hard not to turn that volume up.
Rating: 7/10
