China Girl [1987]

In fair 1987 where we lay our scene, we are closing out the Romeo and Juliet unit of My Year of Shakespeare with the braindead toughguy version, Abel Ferrara's China Girl.

Going into this, I was psyched. Seeing the Italian neighborhood react to the bakery's signage getting taken down and the Chinese restaurant's signage going up was so remarkably well shot, just a tidy little story of how communities change and the abrupt uprooting facilitated by real estate, told in montage of anguished close-ups to music that sounds like it was from The Godfather.

Unfortunately, the movie beyond the 0:03:26 mark also happened. Like The Hottie and the Nottie for The Taming of the Shrew, this wasn't a particularly faithful (or artful) adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. What if everyone — Juliet, her Nurse, Juliet's parents, Romeo, Romeo's mom — said "fuck"? What if there was a sex scene that read as extremely awkward, to the point where you as an audience member think "hey these actors aren't that good at the actual acting portion, is this still simulated?" What if all the music that wasn't Mario Puzo-flavored in this sounded like Do The Bojack [instrumental]? I suspect these last-week swing-for-the-fence movies, when I'm covering a single play, are all going to be of a frustrating kind; hopefully the others will be less Extremely Racist.

Like I said, this adapts the beats of the play extremely loosely to recenter the conflict in a West Side Story-like gang environment. These gangs are less finger-snapping and choreography, and more likely to randomly beat each-other with chains. There's no "organize a rumble"; they just jump each other, or do a drive-by, or whip molotov cocktails. If you thought

Stray Highlights

To its dubious credit, it only feels longer than its 90 minute runtime.

The image of a dead hanged gang member suspended from the overhead wires like he was a pair of shoes was a pretty intensely cool toughguy-ism.

The cinematography for this isn't, like, Michael Mann's "Thief" but it's not that far off from it either.

Some of the apparently-written-for-the-movie music is charming if you can look past how insanely dated it sounds. Wedge that between Pat Benatar and Meatloaf, maybe alongside some of the more throwback-y Cribshitter songs or Laura Branigan, you've got yourself a mixtape brewing.

Ultimately

Ultimately, how artlessly the movie happened has me wondering what is the point of a Shakespeare adaptation that only navigates the plot beats - setting and context be damned - and zero of the language? Like is there anyone actually verifying how much of an adaptation movies claim to be or could someone say that, for example, Rapid Fire is an adaptation of Hamlet?

I'm grateful this movie didn't stand the test of time to be as well-quoted and remembered as other tough guy movies like Goodfellas, Scarface, the assorted ouvre of Quentin Tarantino, Drive, Oldboy, and so on. Would I rather watch this or Black Rain again? I guess this, as it's shorter, but neither is the "good" answer.

Anyhow. Thank you — and like I said with McLintock, sorry — for joining me on this entry of My Year of Shakespeare. As for March/next week, the schedule is

• Mar 7: Antony & Cleopatra [1972]
• Mar 14: Julius Caesar [1953]
• Mar 21: Coriolanus [2011]
• Mar 28: Titus [1999],

covering four plays in as many weeks. I might also be seeing a play of Julius Caesar done by The Company Theatre.

Hopefully these will be a better use of our time than China Girl was.