Taking an old Shakespearean yarn and weaving it into a hip, energetic romantic-comedy with a few hard kicks, Bruno Barreto's Romeo & Juliet Get Married begs description by a plethora of seemingly trite and obnoxiously diminutive words. Adorable, sincere and heartfelt all immediately come to mind, each of those truly earned by Barreto's light-hearted yet still arty affair.

When women's soccer coach Juliet (Luana Piovani), a lifelong Palmeiras' fan, spots Romeo (Marco Ricca) cheering on the side of rival team Corinthians during a game, she's immediately smitten. With the attraction left as a side note for a moment, Juliet only later bumps into her soon-to-be beau when an emergency forces her to visit to an optometrist, which, conveniently, Romeo is. In an appropriately cheesy moment, the pair stare at one another from opposite sides of an optical refractor, and simple as that they're in love.

Tensions develop, however, as Romeo progressively realizes that he has to hide his team preference from Juliet, her father Alfredo Baragatti (Luiz Gustavo) and pill-popping mother Isabela (Martha Mellinger). Slipping into the skin of a Palmeiras' supporter, Romeo alienates both his grandmother Nenzica (Berta Zemel) and teenage son Zilinho (Leonardo Miggiorin). As pressures bear down on the couple, and an absurd Trans-Atlantic flight finds Romeo locked in the plane's cockpit, trying desperately to prevent being 'pillowed' by an angry mob of loyal Palmeiras' fans, the comic flourishes climax to slyly address issues of identity and forgiveness.

Despite the overall feeling of levity in the film, Piovani plays the confusion of differing desires with absolute honesty, her eyes so much of the time filled with waiting pools of tears. In contrast, both Gustavo and Zemel exploit every line of humor, infusing scenes with infectious passion. Much more subdued, straight man performance by Ricca carries the film's logic, always grounding in a tangible reality the soccer team betrayal associated stress--which may for American audiences seem incomprehensible at times, particularly because the soccer fervor is not nearly as potent in the US as in the international sports pulse. It's Mellinger perhaps though who steals the film's pivotal scene. Without upstaging the other actors, she reigns in her spotlight moment with such focus, her mantra "Hate it. Hate it. Hate it," a rally cry pronouncement for anyone settled with compromise to a fanatic spouse.

While cinematographer Adriano Goldman works well with traditional shot design but shines in a visually bold driving sequence, editor Felipe Lacerda remains always much more comfortable with typical two-shot, close-up cut patterns. Varying wide shot cuts of fans at the actual games pinpoint too much of the film's artifice, serving only as an exit from the story. Art director Cassio Amarante, set decorator Marcelo Larrea and costume designer Caia Guimarães also put in superb work to create two believable, distinct soccer-only driven environments.

A sweet film, with only a few narrative hesitations, Romeo & Juliet Get Married is that type of homage that just can't take itself too seriously, and that's in the end the great thing about it.

LifeSize Entertainment releases the film today. Purchase DVD here.

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