


The article also shows that in Torre’s film “Shakespearecentric” concerns-what counts as Shakespeare, which includes the multifarious ways in which Romeo and Juliet has been recycled in contemporary global media culture-and “Shakespeareccentric” concerns (Richard Burt) repeatedly interact with one another. It adds that these fragments are often re-mediated, de-contextualized and forced to cohabit with the language of the body, music and dance, or even with the conventions of silent films, in ways which are reciprocally illuminating. The article argues that Torre’s film is a re-iteration which “produces” the “textual body” of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as an ensemble of spectral / textual fragments which remain to be translated into Italian, and thus draws attention to translation as an interminable process. It is opposed not only by the two lovers’ “households”-respectively, Toni’s three ugly aunties and Romea’s closest friends Mercutia and Baldassarra-but also by the whole Nigerian immigrant community, including those African characters who run the racket of prostitution, and, more indirectly, by the local Mafia. The interracial passion between Toni and Romea exacerbates pre-existing ethnic conflicts. In the film, which combines neo-realist cinematographic techniques with the artificial style of the musical, Shakespeare’s “star-cross’d lovers” become Toni Giulietto, a lousy local rock singer, and Romea Wacoubo, a beautiful Nigerian prostitute who falls in love with him when she sees him standing on his balcony. The article explores Roberta Torre’s film Sud Side Stori (2000), an extravagant Italian re-vision of both Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story (1961) set in the Sicilian city of Palermo.
