Rome & Juliet

Not exactly what I was hoping for, but have to say that it is a nice romantic story. Some compared this movie to Imagine Me and You as the plot seemed to be similar. Well, in a way it is as Rome is a florist, Juliet is about to get married and yes both movies have a happy ending. But Rome & Juliet is a long (unnecessary too long) melodrama, very similar to any awful Latin American telenovela (soap opera).

After seeing some Philippines movies I find that all have similar style that totally looks foreign to my eyes and this movie confirms that the style is so different that becomes at times awkward to watch. So with this say, let’s get into this movie.

This Connie Macatuno film tells about two straight women that fall for each other since they first catch a glimpse of each other at Church, but the romance is developed slowly, very slowly and with many life distractions around them. Juliet is a schoolteacher that becomes engaged to Marc –who belongs to an upper social class than Juliet- and they decide to hire a wedding planner that is none other than Rome, who actually owns a flower shop but nevertheless agrees to be their wedding planner. As expected Rome and Juliet start to spend a lot of time together and since the very beginning they are drawn to each other and become friends until one night that Rome’s ex-true-love (a man) comes out of the blue and Juliet is truly jealous.

I believe the screenplay intention is to cover as much as possible about the “difficult” decision straight women have to take to cross into a non-society accepted women behavior; so, that’s why the story goes all over the place and leaves no time to do acceptable characters and characters interaction development. Is like when you try to cover too much and you end up lost going in different directions with absolutely no focus; consequently there are too many things that do not conclude, happen out-of-the-blue and become not real to your eyes.

Still, if you take out all the melodrama, all the distracting life incidents and concentrate on the romance between Rome & Juliet you will not only find that the best cinematic moments of the movie are when the two are together, but also will find that both actresses have good chemistry together and their relationship building-up is done quite nicely. Also, to my western eyes it was a strange experience to be able to see all the lez places they show in the movie, even when have to admit that the images showed a wider selection of lez types than many other genre movies than I have seen.

I can only recommend this movie to those that like lesbian interest movies and I have to suggest that you take it easy and be patient watching the 2 hours plus movie with many bad acted and not interesting moments, as there are many very good and well acted moments that are spread all over the movie and of course belong only to Rome & Juliet characters.