Fellowes on form for Romeo & Juliet: The most tragic tale imaginable

PUBLISHED: 18:54 EST, 10 October 2013 | UPDATED: 18:58 EST, 10 October 2013

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ROMEO AND JULIET (PG)

VERDICT: Three star-cross'd lovers

Rating:

The most tragic tale imaginable, from the greatest wordsmith in the English language.

Not a reference to Anna, the lady’s maid raped in Downton Abbey, but a rather good play-writing effort by William Shakespeare, here re-worked by Julian Fellowes.

By my troth, I confess this did cause me apprehension.

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Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld star in Romeo and Juliet

Douglas Booth stars as the dashing Romeo

Would Juliet’s nurse be a Renaissance Mrs Patmore? Mercifully, no.

Fellowes has done a decent job in abbreviating the story of star-cross’d lovers and simplifying the text, while keeping faithful in spirit to the original.

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The sumptuous settings help his cause; it’s good to see Romeo and Juliet back where, in my old-fashioned view, it belongs: in 15th-century Verona, not on motorbikes in Miami or among garden gnomes (though I’ll concede Gnomeo And Juliet once provoked great family mirth during Christmas charades).

The cast delivers, too, on the whole, even if Damian Lewis is the least probable-looking Italian duke you’ve ever seen.

But any Romeo and Juliet must stand or fall on the quality of its leads, and Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld enable it to stand.

I first saw Booth as Pip in the BBC’s production of Great Expectations but he was too gorgeous, too modern-looking, a Dickensian boy-band singer. Yet here he looks right.

And Steinfeld makes an aptly young and guileless Juliet. If the film attracts a new audience, it’s done its job. I hope it does.

Trailer for Romeo and Juliet starring Hailee Steinfeld