ROCK & ROMANCE
Byrne, O’Dowd, Hawke make sweet music in ‘Juliet, Naked’
Another film version of a music-based romance from the pen of Brit Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity,” “About a Boy”), Jesse Peretz’s “Juliet, Naked” tells the arguably Oedipal tale of a unique love triangle.
Its corners are a seemingly mousy 30-something woman named Annie (not mousy Rose Byrne), her longtime boyfriend Duncan (Chris O’Dowd), a man obsessed with a mysterious alt-rock legend, and the legend himself, who will have a romantic liaison with Annie, much to the neglectful and doubly jealous boyfriend’s chagrin.
Duncan is a film and music teacher and the rabid, podcasting fan and unofficial head of the cult of American rock star Tucker Crowe (a gloriously weathered Ethan Hawke). “One of the seminal and unsung figures of altrock,” according to gobsmacked disciple Duncan.
Crowe fell off the map some years earlier, leaving behind a breadcrumb trail of failed relationships and several children. Tucker is aware of Duncan’s podcast, and Duncan is aware that Tucker is aware, etc.
Annie, meanwhile, is in the middle of opening a local history museum for the coastal town of Sandcliff and the pressure on her is mounting. Duncan and Annie have been together for some time. But he now sleeps on the sofa, near his Tucker Crowe shrine. He and
Annie are not married although Annie, who has a gay sister (Megan
Dodds) who keeps picking up straight women, longs for a child.
Just as Duncan begins to cheat on Annie with a student, Annie secretly arranges to meet — OMG — Tucker in London. One of the film’s ironies is that, while Annie yearns for motherhood, Tucker can never make amends for the neglect he has
shown many of his children.
Like previous films based on the novels of Hornby, “Juliet, Naked” is a mix of a music lover's knowledge and shared ardor, soap opera, sly and sophisticated comedy and romance. While Peretz (TV's “Girls”) is no Stephen Frears (“High Fidelity”), he is no slouch either, and O'Dowd, Byrne and Hawke help enormously. (“Juliet, Naked” has no one naked, but does contains