Juli­et, Naked

Six of Nick Hornby’s nov­els have been adapt­ed into films. Some­thing about this endur­ing British author’s work seems to lend itself to the realm of cin­e­ma, even tran­scend­ing con­ti­nen­tal bound­aries – his 1995 book ​‘High Fideli­ty’ was trans­plant­ed from Lon­don to Chica­go for its 2000 movie out­ing, star­ring John Cusack and Jack Black. The lat­est of Hornby’s nov­els to make it to the big screen is Juli­et, Naked, which sees a bick­er­ing cou­ple reeval­u­ate their life togeth­er as it becomes clear one par­ty is more invest­ed in his favourite musi­cian than their relationship.

The cou­ple in ques­tion are Annie (Rose Byrne) and Dun­can (Chris O’Dowd) – they live in a small sea­side town, where Annie runs the local muse­um and Dun­can teach­es at the local col­lege. The third per­son in their rela­tion­ship is indie musi­cian Tuck­er Crowe (Ethan Hawke), who mys­te­ri­ous­ly van­ished from the pub­lic eye some 20 years pre­vi­ous, fol­low­ing the release of his well-received break-up album ​‘Juli­et’. Dun­can has ded­i­cat­ed his whole adult­hood to Crowe’s music, and as well as hav­ing an unnerv­ing shrine to him in the house he shares with girl­friend Annie, also runs a fan­site where he dis­cuss­es the­o­ries about Crowe’s dis­ap­pear­ance with like-mind­ed fans. Some­what inex­plic­a­bly, Annie has been with Dun­can and tol­er­at­ed his obses­sion for 15 years, despite Dun­can repeat­ed­ly com­plain­ing that she doesn’t ​‘get it’. One has to imag­ine Annie has the patience of a saint for putting up with this boor­ish man-child – par­tic­u­lar­ly when, fol­low­ing the unearthing of a sup­pos­ed­ly lost Tuck­et Crowe album (a demo enti­tled ​‘Juli­et, Naked’), Dun­can becomes even more of a dickhead.

Spurned by her lover, Annie posts a neg­a­tive review of the Crowe album online, and is sur­prised when the musi­cian him­self gets in touch with her via email, seem­ing­ly amused by her crit­i­cal analy­sis. The pair strike up an online flir­ta­tion in which their share their woes and creep­ing fears they’ve wast­ed most of their adult lives. It becomes appar­ent that Tuck­er has failed mul­ti­ple times as a father and hus­band, while Annie – who swore off hav­ing chil­dren so she could be smug, or some­thing like that – now wants a baby. Inevitably Tuck­er decides to vis­it Eng­land, and arranges to meet with Annie, who gets to expe­ri­ence for her­self the incred­i­ble pro­duc­tion that is his life.

Direc­tor Jesse Peretz is best known for his work on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, hav­ing direct­ed episodes of Girls and GLOW, but pre­vi­ous­ly made good-natured com­e­dy Our Idiot Broth­er. This film has a sim­i­lar earnest­ness to it, reflect­ing on the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of famil­ial ties and the idea of per­son­al lega­cy. Byrne and Hawke are well-suit­ed too and have a charm­ing rap­port, but Chris O’Dowd gets short shrift play­ing the huge­ly irri­tat­ing Dun­can. Even a soul­ful ren­di­tion of The Kinks’ ​‘Water­loo Sun­set’ per­formed by Hawke isn’t enough to ele­vate the mea­gre sto­ry­line or push past the navel-gaz­ing twee­ness of it all, and the cloy­ing ​‘British­ness’ of the dia­logue and set­tings reveal the film as some Amer­i­can approx­i­ma­tion of Eng­land, with lit­tle con­nec­tion to the real thing. It pro­duces a strange sort of arti­fi­cial sweet­ness, and ulti­mate­ly does lit­tle to stay in your mind long after the end cred­its roll.