[usr 4.5]
“Juliet, Naked” is the story of Annie (the long-suffering girlfriend of Duncan) and her unlikely transatlantic romance with once revered, now faded, singer-songwriter, Tucker Crowe, who also happens to be the subject of Duncan’s musical obsession.
I love action movies, horror films, sci-fi, westerns, thrillers, and a good ol’ love story. Most guys won’t admit that they like this particular genre because many of then have reps to protect but come on guys, who doesn’t want to root for the guy and the girl who are meant to be together, instead of the guy and the girl who up to this point, settled for their partners, instead of seeking out their one true love? “Juliet, Naked” is based on the best-selling novel by Nick Hornby, the British author of ‘Fever Pitch,’ ‘High Fidelity,’ and ‘About a Boy.’ I haven’t read the novel so I won’t be comparing it to the movie adaptation, rather, I’ll just be reviewing its celluloid cousin on its own merits.
When casting a love story, it is important, no, vital, that your two lead protagonists have chemistry. Thank God for Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke. I have always liked Ms. Byrne, ever since she made an impact on me with “Insidious” and I first remember seeing Mr, Hawke in a 1985 sci-fi movie called “Explorers,” which also starred the late River Phoenix. Individually, they can both elevate whatever material they are working with, together, they are simply irresistible.
Ms. Byrne plays Annie Platt, who lives in England and is the curator of a local museum. She has been dating Duncan (Chris O’Dowd), who teaches at the local college and who is also an obsessive music fan, for 15 years. Their love life is practically non-existent and Duncan spends most of his time on his website which he created to worship his music idol, Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), an American singer/songwriter who years earlier, abruptly quit the music scene and hasn’t been heard of since.
When Duncan receives a CD from a colleague that contains solo acoustic demos of some of Tucker’s earlier songs, he is overly enthusiastic to sample the tracks and posts a very positive review of it on his website. Annie, after listening to the album herself, and having put up with Tucker Crowe taking over their lives for years, posts a critique on Duncan’s website, criticizing it harshly. Duncan is outraged but then, out of the blue, she receives an e-mail from someone claiming to be Tucker Crowe himself and who agrees with Annie’s honest assessment of his earlier work. Naturally, she writes it off as a joke but over time, the two begin writing each other, opening up about parts of their lives they’ve never told other people. When Duncan tells Annie that he slept with a co-worker at the college and asks for forgiveness, she kicks him out of her place and she is heartbroken but finds consolation in her correspondence with Tucker.
Tucker lives in America with his six-year-old son Jackson (Azhy Robertson) and because of his tumultuous past as a musician, consuming vast amounts of alcohol and drugs while touring, over the years he’s discovered that he fathered a lot of children from a lot of different women. When one of his children, Lizzie (Ayoola Smart), turns up from London, pregnant, and just wants to get to know him, when she returns home a short while later and gives birth to a beautiful baby boy, Tucker decides to go and visit them, taking Jackson with him. He asks Annie if she’d like to come to London to meet and she happily obliges. When she turns up at the restaurant and waits there all day, with no sign of Tucker, she dejectedly begins the long trek back home to the coast but then receives a call from Tucker, stating that he suffered a heart attack and is in the hospital. She comes to visit him but is immediately overwhelmed when several of Tucker’s exes, along with all of their kids, who turn up, expecting the worst, only to find him recovering.
Eventually, Tucker leaves the hospital and Annie invites him and Jackson to her place by the ocean. While out on the sandy beach one day, Annie sees Duncan, jogging with his new girlfriend and he invites himself over, curious as to who the new man is in her life. When Tucker introduces himself, Duncan immediately insults him, thinking that Annie put him up to it and storms off but later, after looking at some old photos of Tucker, Duncan realizes that maybe it was him, and returns to her house, in the hopes she’ll invite him in, which she does. As they all sit down to dinner, Duncan starts raving about Tucker and his music, one album in particular, “Juliet,” and while he lavishes praise all over it, Tucker doesn’t, claiming it was drivel and written a long time ago. Duncan is outraged and leaves and Annie tries to apologize for his behavior but Tucker brushes it off as no big deal.
In their time together, Annie and Tucker grow very fond of each other and Jackson becomes very attached to her but she knows, as does Tucker, that soon he will have to go back to America and continue living his life, and she will have to live hers as well. She finally opens up to him and claims that she has always wanted to be a mother and they both make love before he departs. As their correspondence continues, we discover that she moved to London, got a new job, and is in the process of becoming a mother. Walking down the high street one afternoon, she stops at a coffee shop, only to see Tucker waiting for her, and they meet up once more!
“Juliet, Naked” is a very unconventional love story to say the very least. We can see, from the very beginning, that Duncan and Annie are simply going through the motions of a relationship, work, home, sleep, repeat. They obviously still care about each other but there is no romance, or passion, or, well, pretty much anything, and we know it is only a matter of time before something, or someone, happens. Duncan’s infidelity is exactly what Annie needs, although she won’t admit it out loud but because of it, she can now start living her life the way she always wanted to. Occasionally, we hear her thoughts in voiceover and she claims that while she and Duncan agreed early on that they didn’t want kids, her views have changed over the years but every time she tried to bring it to his attention, he brushed her off.
Tucker, on the other hand, discovering that he has so many kids, is overwhelmed, a big contributing factor to his heart attack but towards the end of the film, when Annie states that she wants a baby to raise by herself, she takes away all of the burden that Tucker has been dealing with over the years, and for the first time in his life, is happy to give her what she wants. I do know that the ending of the book has Annie move to America so she can be with Tucker and Jackson but here, she tells us that she is living in the big city by herself, working at a good job, and preparing for motherhood, with no outside help whatsoever, empowering herself and her soon-to-be child. Ethan Hawke and Rose Byrne have undeniable onscreen chemistry and like Mr. Hawke’s “The Before Trilogy,” in which he meets a mysterious and beautiful young woman in Vienna and spends one night with her, which was then followed up by two more sequels, each taking place many years later in their lives, “Juliet, Naked” is a movie I would love to see a follow-up to, and maybe even a third film in the series. Both Annie and Tucker are worlds apart but it is exactly that aspect that draws them together, and makes them the perfect couple!
Available on Blu-ray (plus Digital), DVD, and On Demand November 13th
