With a cast of feral cats from Venice, New York City, Verona and Ghent, the dialogue is vocalized by award-winning British film and theater talent.
'La Dame aux Chats,' the only human character in Romeo.Juliet, is an eccentric Venetian bag lady who lives with her pet rat on a houseboat named Fellini.
She saves the lives of Juliet (a magnificent cloud-white Turkish Angora) and her feline family by smuggling them onto a ship bound for the New World.
Acosta wanted to add to the footage and soundtrack, the essence of the classic story of starry-eyed lovers – not just Shakespeare's version, or the Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins adaptation, but the ancient tale of Layla and Majnun.
It took almost 25 years before Acosta would be able to put together all the necessary ingredients – the most important being technology – to create as director, producer, cinematographer and writer his first full-length motion picture.
The soundtrack features Serge Prokofiev's ballet music Romeo and Juliet performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by André Previn.
The original Romeo.Juliet Theme, composed by Emanuel Vardi and Armando Acosta, is performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth.
Romeo.Juliet has been acknowledged as a pioneering technical achievement by Academy Award winning cinematographer, Linwood Dunn and other motion picture specialists.
Henri Chapier from the French television network, Antenne 2, reported, "A baroque film of art almost crazy with an enormous budget, Romeo.Juliet by Armando Acosta tells Shakespeare's play through the confrontation of two rival tribes of cats.
"[10][11] The Sunday Times wrote, "The strangest film on show was Romeo.Juliet, directed by Armando Acosta, in which Prokofiev's music and the voices of Robert Powell, Ben Kingsley, Vanessa Redgrave and Maggie Smith are accompanied by onscreen performances delivered by cats, photographed sumptuously in Venice, Ghent and Coney Island.
A special cinema which does not follow a classical story line, but harmoniously blends my father's ballet music, Shakespeare's text and the magical images of the film."