Classic wit and spirit lace a heady love story

http://ae.zip2.com/charlotte/scripts/staticpage.dll?reviewid=78060&only=y&spage=AE/movies/movies_details.htm&id=18400&version=59125&ccity=Charlotte+Area&cstate=NC&adrVer=914349388&ver=e2.6&userid=233582079&userpw=.&uv=9544&uh=233582079,0,

By Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer
Published: 12/23/98


   Things aren't going well for Will Shakespeare. Like Jack Nicholson's
stymied writer in The Shining, the young playwright can't get the words
to come. Instead, he's scrawling his name over and over on a sheet of
parchment. The Bard is blocked.

   Bad news for Elizabethan theatergoers, perhaps, but grand news for
near-millennial movie mavens: Shakespeare in Love, which imagines the
romantic and creative angst of the celebrated scribe as he labors
vainly against deadline and then finds inspiration in the form of a
well-born, beautiful lady, is a heady love story dashed with wit and
spirit. Written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, and directed by John
Madden with puckish energy and smarts, Shakespeare in Love is, as its
namesake would (and did) say, saint-seducing gold.

   The place is London, the year is 1593, and the problem is this: The
hapless, toothless theater producer Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush, a
comic fright in Tudor garb) is expecting a new play from his young
wordsmith. But Shakespeare - assayed by Joseph Fiennes with bounding
athleticism, boyish vulnerability, and the indrawn intensity of an
obsessive artist - can barely scratch out the anemic couplets of his
work-in-progress, a pirate comedy called Romeo and Ethel.

   It is not until he sets eyes on Lady Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow), a
noble woman with a fierce passion for the theater, that Will begins to
see where this Romeo play is going: star-crossed lovers, a balcony
scene, Montagues and Capulets. He has found his muse.

   Part of the great charm of Shakespeare in Love is in watching how
elements of the play are interwoven into the film - the fanciful
scenarios by which Will is inspired to fashion his rapturous, tragic
tale. The other great charm is watching Fiennes and Paltrow together:
The love scenes, which are considerably steamier than anything that
would have been allowed on the old Globe stage, are ablaze.

   And Paltrow, who may as well apply for a British passport after her
performance this year as a double-life Londoner in Sliding Doors, gets
to do dual roles of a sort again: Determined to become an actor, even
though in 16th-century Britain the profession is strictly the domain of
males, Viola tucks her locks, girds her bosom, and dons a cute little
fake goatee. Her ``Tom'' auditions for a part and wins it. It takes a
funny, furious chase (in which a Thames rowboat serves the purpose of a
New York taxicab) before Will discovers the deception. Sparks - and some
pretty prize verse - fly.

   In addition to Fiennes, who does a star-making job here, and the
radiant Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love teems with wonderful performances.
At times it seems as though every familiar-looking British thespian has
dropped in for a line or two. Notable among them are Colin Firth as
Viola's haughty, insufferable suitor; Tom Wilkinson as a stagestruck
financier; Simon Callow as the stuffy Master of the Revels; an
uncredited Rupert Everett as that other literary lion of the day,
Christopher Marlowe; and Judi Dench, whose appearance as Queen Elizabeth
is aptly majestical. The young Yank (and Miramax contract player, it
seems) Ben Affleck acquits himself nicely, and amusingly, as a self-
important star who lands only a modest supporting part, as Mercutio, in
Shakespeare's latest production.

   The costumes, designed by Sandy Powell (who also did the glam-rock
getups of Velvet Goldmine), are glorious; the sets, from palace court
to ramshackle brothel to the writer's garret, are too. If the movie
begins a little clunkily, it is only to find its pace - which it soon
enough does. And then this sprightly affair is off and running.