Loved it, but why Claire Danes?

Rating: 10/10 (23 February 2006)

After reading the first page of the IMDb readers' "Comments" filtered in order of "Best" Comments, I found myself agreeing with most, and even learning historical tidbits and artistic insights to enhance future viewings. Since other readers said it so well, I have only one question: With all the potential actresses who could have played Juliet, why Claire Danes?
Though appropriately young and innocent contrasting against the debauched culture backdrop, throughout the entire movie her northern homeliness seemed improbable to have diverted Romeo's romantic spark from Rosline, ab alluring siren by his friend Mercutio's description, guaranteed to keep an impressionable and romantic young man ensnared.
Claire's hair poorly dyed at the roots in a color conflicting with her natural pallor and lacking life and shine was fine for her death scene, but not captivating prior. (Picture Greek actress Jennifer Anniston's shining, moving tresses mutely but eloquently attesting to a pampered upbringing and great south-of-the-equator genetic heritage.) Likewise Claire's pasty skin tone and lack of feature definition requiring makeup she was denied except way too late some too-dark and earthbound brick lipstick clashing not only with her coloring but her angelic costume for the big party.
Italian girls' beauty is in curving black eyebrows arching like flying swallows above thickly fringed lashes lowering modestly over shy but alluringly smoldering dark eyes while thick glossy ringlets toss and curve around plump skin warmed by cloudless sunny Mediterranean skies. (Think Latin lovers and salsa dancers.) Does this describe Claire Danes? Not at all!
Instead we're served up a pasty pale girl from north of the Equator who looks like the Dane she is named from chilly overcast Denmark, with crudely common peasant features. My neighbors are prettier than this flat-chested, dull-colored, severely-in-need-of-makeup girl who should be cast as a Puritan maid to a rich scion of the estate who falls in love with her because prolonged proximity teaches him maturely to appreciate her grateful sweetness and trustworthy salt-of-the earth soul. A far cry from the instantly captivating, imagination-firing, arrestingly demure but hotly passionate Capulet little rich girl.
Claire's best visual trait is easily and quickly identified since she was gifted with so little aesthetically; but she wastes that lively smile prematurely in her scenes so that it feels coyly contrived, like a cute little masked clown instead of the ingenuously spontaneous eruption out of a girlish soul trembling on the threshold of new womanly feelings...shakily unfamiliar but at the same time deliciously tempting to be explored with this suddenly appearing object for her adoration--intense, beautiful, and ardorous young Romeo.
I longed for a prior Juliet--innocently sultry and husky-voice Olivia Hussey, a petite little hussy of a princess--opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Or even Marisa Tomei, who always seems young, hot-headed and vulnerable. Or even the youngest "Gilmore Girl" (though not typically Italian), with her big eyes, shiny hair, and lovely young body delicately yielding to new sensuality. We want a girl on her first date and prom, a Snow White awakened by her youthful Prince charming, not a tomboy.
This artistic production was such an original piece and so vividly delivered that the colorless Claire was an even bigger disappointment to me here than she would have been in a more pedestrian production of the classic Romeo & Juliet. I'm sure I'll enjoy this actress in future movies better suited, since IMDb readers' comment enthusiastically about her; but she stops me from wanting to own this otherwise artistic and moving rendition of the poetry of Romeo & Juliet.