Mint, the new drama from Charlotte Regan, is so simple in concept it’s almost hard to make sense of. It’s a story of impossible love, between two people whose families are bitter crime rivals, so their romance simply cannot be. This is absolutely, brazenly Romeo and Juliet, the oldest love story in the world. How it comes to feel so original, so magnetic, is mystifying. The dialogue is so spare, the look of the piece so unalloyed, there’s nothing sweet about it.
It reminded Emma Laird, who plays Shannon – the female half of the couple – of Twilight. The supernatural series was, she says: “the first romantic story that I attached to. It felt like Mint could be what Twilight was for me, when I was growing up, romantic and beautiful and naive and cinematic, a whole world made of those things. It’s so much more than the story of Shannon, it’s so much bigger than the characters.” It reminded me a bit of Heathers, but not for any reason it doesn’t look like the film, it’s funny – but in a different way – and it doesn’t end the same. But it just reminds you of the first romantic thing you ever saw, the first time you understood what romance was.
