Summary
Sensing that he cannot leave yet, Romeo leaps out of the Montague convertible. Mercutio desperately calls after him, thinking he is still lamenting Rosaline, when in fact Romeo is setting back out to find Juliet. Concerned but now holding up the motorcade of guests leaving the Capulet party, Mercutio and the other Montague boys drive away, leaving Romeo to scale the walls surrounding the mansion. When he comes down on the other side, he finds himself in an ornate courtyard, its architectural features replete with statuesque carvings of human figures, in the middle of which is a lighted pool. A long staircase connects the upper landing to the courtyard floor. Romeo stumbles and breaks a lamp, causing a dog to bark and a security officer's attention to perk up; he pushes himself flat up against a wall covered with a lattice-work of vines.
A light suddenly goes on inside the room above. Romeo climbs the vines toward the second story window and waxes poetic about Juliet's beauty, hoping his words will cause her to appear, but The Nurse pops out instead, causing Romeo to recoil in surprised disgust. As he swings back into a concealed position, the first-floor elevator dings and Juliet steps out into the open air in her nightgown, striding past where Romeo is hiding.
Juliet begins her "Rome, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo..." soliloquy, wandering toward the edge of the pool and crouching down, as Romeo breathlessly watches from behind her, still clinging tightly to the lattice-work. When she rises again, he has crept up closely behind her. When he suddenly responds to one of her pleas, Juliet screams and loses her footing, and both of them go plunging into the pool water.
When they emerge above the surface, Juliet asks him how he was able to scale the mansion walls, and anxiously warns him that his presence there could lead to his death. Romeo responds that love carried him toward her, and boldly shouts that he will not be cowed by the Capulets. His commotion lures a security guard out to the pool, forcing Juliet to push him out of sight while the guard inspects the surroundings. Juliet pacifies the guard with a smile and he retreats.
After Romeo manages to assuage Juliet's fears, they share a passionate kiss in the pool. Afterwards, Juliet asks Romeo sincerely if he loves her. Romeo vows he loves her "by yonder blessed moon," but Juliet asks him "to swear not by the moon," as it bespeaks inconstancy and volatility. She asks him either not to swear at all, or to swear by his own image. Juliet reveals that Romeo's sudden, rash appearance has made her more anxious than joyous, and attempts to bid him goodnight, climbing out of the pool.
As she heads for the stairs, Romeo calls pleadingly after her, asking whether she will leave him thusly "so unsatisfied." Juliet suspiciously asks him what satisfaction he desires, thinking he may merely be craving an act of sexual consummation. Romeo responds that what he wants is an honest exchange of "faithful vow[s]"—essentially, a marriage proposal. Overjoyed at his answer, Juliet runs back into his arms and the two crash into the pool once more. Underneath the water, they share a kiss.
The splash startles The Nurse, who calls after Juliet from inside and makes for the courtyard. Juliet breathlessly tells Romeo that if his proposal is sincere to send her word tomorrow and she'll happily accept; but if not, to let her grieve and not contact her further. They say goodnight and steal one last parting kiss through the banister of the stairs. From the balcony, Juliet tells Romeo she will send for him at 1:00pm the following day. Romeo rushes up the lattice-work to catch a beaded necklace with a cross that she drops into his arms as a symbol of their exchange of vows. As Romeo retreats and The Nurse continues to wail, Juliet mourns that "parting is such sweet sorrow."
Analysis
The "balcony scene" in Luhrmann's film was shot on location at the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City, Mexico. The preceding scenes, in which Romeo is led away by Mercutio and the other Montague boys as Juliet looks on from a number of interior and exterior balconies, fully creates the expectation in the viewer that Romeo and Juliet will soon meet again within the context of the forthcoming love scene, almost certainly the most well known of the entire play. Luhrmann's staging uses this expectation to generate an ironic effect, choosing not to frame the action as a "balcony" scene at all, but rather a swimming pool scene. This dramatic irony reaches a moment of comic frisson when Romeo, climbing the lattice-work to Juliet's second-story window, is unexpectedly greeted by The Nurse's visage instead.
Having realized the balcony was a decoy, the viewer then sees Juliet on the ground level walking toward the pool. A layer of dramatic irony persists to the extent that Juliet does not realize Romeo is present until he responds directly to her after his aside, by which point she is on the edge of the shimmering blue pool, a symbol for Romeo and Juliet's luminous but ill-fated love as already established in the aquarium scene. The image of them underwater is meant to invariably conjure the image of them drowning, and their falling together into the pool is a gesture that symbolizes the combination of abandon, haste, and carelessness that ultimately dooms them both to the underworld.
The scene was important for the marketing and success of the film, given that it depends entirely on the chemistry between Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead roles. Its aesthetic and location—an illicit, steamy make-out session hosted in a stately courtyard with a sleek, glowing pool-- would fit in among popular primetime soap operas on network television set in mid-1990s Los Angeles like Beverly Hills, 90210, and Melrose Place. DiCaprio's role in the coming-of-age story The Basketball Diaries (1995) and Claire Danes's role in the high school television drama My So-Called Life (1994-95) had primed them both in the public eye for the kind of youthful, romantic atmosphere Luhrmann was seeking to create. For this scene, Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio were nominated for the MTV Movie Award for "Best Kiss."
Romeo and Juliet's first conversation is also a negotiation, one in which Romeo is passionately vying for Juliet's attentions and Juliet is strategically halting his advances. When a frustrated Romeo asks "O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" Danes's Juliet responds, "What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?" in a sharp manner, evoking a feminist political emphasis on a woman's bodily autonomy. The politics of female sexuality and virginity was also a subject well mined by the plots of young-adult soap operas that this scene resembles, such as Donna Martin's storyline on Beverly Hills, 90210.
When Romeo formally vows his proposal to Juliet and she accepts, the two crash into the blue pool once more and share a deep kiss, symbolizing the fact that their marriage contract has also sealed their fate unto death. The image of them kissing underwater recurs in flashback much later after they have committed suicide and slows to a dramatic freeze-frame, suggesting an iconic, timeless effect that affirms its centrality within the visual and symbolic hierarchies of the film. The object that symbolizes their hopeful exchange of vows—Juliet's locket, which she romantically drops into Romeo's hand near the scene's end—is tragically returned by Romeo to her finger before he dies in the film's final moments, an archetypal symbol of their "star cross'd" fate.
