Some magic from Hawke, Byrne in ‘Juliet, Naked’.
Nick Hornby tale of renewal makes a charming transition to screen
The time is getting to the point where we’re all just going to have to appreciate Ethan Hawke and the particular qualities he has been bringing to movies for more than 20 years. “Juliet, Naked,” based on the novel by Nick Hornby, finds him in what could be called his typical mode. But what a flexible and complex thing a typical Ethan Hawke role is, filled with warmth, and an awareness of absurdity, and the suggestion of real depths of thought and feeling.
He is capable of blowing it big time — the best don’t fail; they bomb — grunting through the dreadful “Maudie” as an English provincial. But consider the range and consistency of what we’ve come to expect from him, from the humor and deepening sensitivity of his performances in the “Before” series and “Boyhood” to his spiritual anguish in “First Reformed.” Perhaps the key to Hawke as a performer is that, even in light material — sometimes in the very moment of being funny — he carries with him an awareness of the essential, the air of someone in touch with some true current of life. In “Juliet, Naked,” he is a former musician, Tucker Crowe, a singer-songwriter who made a few records and then walked away from an emerging career. Now, 25 years later, few remember him, and almost nobody knows where he is, but he’s the obsession of a small coterie
of rabid fans. The most fanatical of these is Duncan (Chris O’Dowd), who, in between teaching what looks to be a fairly worthless college course about television, spends his life collecting Tucker Crowe memorabilia and arguing with other Crowe obsessives on Skype.
Rose Byrne, in what might be her most charming showcase, is Annie, who lives with Duncan in a small English city and is beginning to realize she made a wrong turn somewhere. She’s almost 40, wishes she had kids, and has come to see Duncan for what he is — an antisocial pedant/weirdo. But as Pink Floyd might say, hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way, and so she goes one day into the next, not miserable, but with no discernible path to happiness.
Then one day, unable to take it anymore, she posts a comment to Duncan’s review of an obscure Tucker Crowe album. She doesn’t like it, and says so. And the next day she gets an email all the way from the United States: It’s Crowe himself, telling her how much he agrees with her. He doesn’t have much use for his old albums, either.
“Juliet, Naked” is very like a Hornby novel in that it’s irresistible and appealing and full of tenderness and idiosyncrasy, and yet when you try to tell people what was so great about it, you can’t do it justice. You just wind up insisting more emphatically and hoping someone will believe you.
How’s this for a try? “Juliet, Naked” is very much like a lot of romantic comedies, except it’s better. And better, in this case, means better every scene — fuller, richer, with wit and emotion and winning dialogue; with surprises that knock you back on your heels, with unexpected encounters, and without any gimmicks, such as fake arguments. It’s just people acting like people, going through an interesting moment in their lives.
Hawke brings to Tucker the weight of unspoken regret and the wise yet dumbfounded look that’s the mark of a complicated past. And Byrne, who has demonstrated impressive comic facility and unerring truthfulness in an array of recent films, now gets to be funny and vulnerable in a way that’s new for her on screen.
Is there anything more to say? Just one thing: Director Jesse Peretz (“Our Idiot Brother,” “The Chateau”) was the ideal director for this material, because of his light touch, subtle observation and genuine feeling for the human comedy. Yet even with that, there’s no accounting for the fairy dust that got sprinkled on “Juliet, Naked.” There’s just something special here.