09 · 04 · 25

The Lovers of Verona in Mexico: ROMEO + JULIET by Baz Luhrmann

Rafael Aviña

An apocalyptic metropolis where violence, impunity for crimes, economic injustice, pollution, traffic jams, and feverish religious imagery coexist. This film tells the story of two powerful entrepreneurial families: the Montagues and the Capulets. Both families are involved in a futile rivalry that they have passed down to their children—young gangsters addicted to blood, alcohol, and narcotics. However, among the brutal exoticism and sexist displays, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet defy the tradition of revenge and unleash their teenage passion, facing a terrible end.

Classics never get old. William Shakespeare’s work is one of the best examples, and it has inspired filmmakers like Kurosawa, Welles, Polanski, Allen, Greenaway, Jarman, and Van Sant. These filmmakers updated the texts of the prolific writer from Stratford-upon-Avon, born in the 16^th century. The feverish and baroque film Romeo and Juliet/Romeo + Juliet (1996) by Australia-born Baz Luhrmann falls into this category. It was shot in Mexico and represents an avant-garde reinterpretation that keeps the story’s original spirit and demonstrates its contemporary relevance. 

Indeed, the then-young filmmaker Luhrmann and the screenwriter Craig Pearce opted for a bold adaptation without fear of ridicule, while respecting almost all of the dialogue from the original Elizabethan play. The director and screenwriter removed their protagonists from the severity of lace costumes and sword duels to place them in an aggressive city where the cult of tattoos and death reigns. Silver-handled pistols bear the inscriptions “daggers” or “swords” to tell the tragedy of the lovers of Verona, played by the very young Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

Alongside its predecessors, this ultramodern version of Romeo and Juliet becomes an explosive mix of gangster cinema, neo-western, revenge drama, and love story, serving as both a summation and metaphor for the impact of video, violence, virginity, cinephile nostalgia, and other manifestations of pop culture. The first prodigious sequence at the gas station updates Sergio Leone and his spaghetti westerns. The meeting between Romeo and Juliet through a fish tank glass recycles the best romantic scene from Casino Royale (1967). This scene features the musical backdrop of "The Look of Love" by Burt Bacharach, sung by Dusty Springfield.

West Side Story (1961) by Robert Wise and Jérome Robbins brought liveliness and the Broadway-style spectacle of musical choreography to love stories, exploring New York slums during the late 1950s and the generational crisis. However, the dramatic film Romeo + Juliet by Luhrmann, a filmmaker experienced in musicals, is not the heir to West Side Story, but to China Girl (1987); essentially a modern version of Shakespeare's own tragedy conceived by a visionary filmmaker like Abel Ferrara.

In fact, Luhrmann’s dramatic treatment supports Ferrara’s themes and obsessions. It is a tale of guilt, redemption, and religious paroxysm in a fictional Verona Beach. Indeed, Romeo and Juliet combines the painful purgatory of the evil lieutenant from Bad Lieutenant (1992) and the multi-ethnic gang duels of the aforementioned China Girl. However, Luhrmann takes advantage of an aesthetic worthy of the MTV of that era and a disturbing and subversive visual design in this microcosm populated by virgins, creating an allegory of exalted purity. 

Of course, Mexico, being the fictional setting for the movie, is no coincidence. The film features the Templo del Sagrado Corazón de María, the bridge of Taxqueña, the Avenida Insurgentes, Reforma, and Chapultepec Castle, alongside television images riddled with violence—an ironic and very contemporary touch. This portrays a country with young people who drive at full speed, families who fight over economic power, and news programs that show bank robberies, homicides, lynchings, and political crimes. In the end, it presents an impossible love story, akin to a futile hope in a chaotic and sinister city where violence is glorified, as it is in contemporary Mexico.

Translated by Abigail Puebla