The idea of presenting Hamlet through Ophelia’s eyes isn’t an original one. Novelist Rebecca Reisert, for example, published Ophelia’s Revenge three years before Lisa Klein’s 2006 YA novel Ophelia ever saw the light of day. And anyone who’s aware of Tom Stoppard’s 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead knows the drill. Still, Ophelia plays much faster and looser with Hamlet than Stoppard ever did—adding new characters, altering relationships, and in at least one major way, changing tragedy into bittersweet hope.

A film adaptation of Klein’s novel, is being released in U.S. theaters on June 28 and on video-on-demand on July 2. It stars Daisy Ridley, who’s best known as Rey in two Star Wars films, in the title role, while Captain Fantastic’s George MacKay portrays Hamlet; Naomi Watts plays Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude; and Clive Owen plays his uncle, Claudius.

A quick refresher for lapsed bardolators: In Hamlet, the titular Danish prince agonizes over taking revenge on his uncle for murdering his father, King Hamlet. Ophelia is a young noblewoman who hopes to marry the prince, although the specifics of their relationship are quite vague. In fact, he treats her cruelly; at one point, he famously commands her to get herself “to a nunnery”—contemporary slang for a brothel. Later, Hamlet kills her father, Polonius, and she goes insane and later drowns, an apparent suicide. Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and Ophelia’s brother Laertes all go on to die in the play’s Grand Guignol ending.

It’s difficult to compare the book with its adaptation without revealing at least a few spoilers—providing, as Gertrude would say, “More matter with less art.” So consider thyself warned.

In Klein’s version of events, Ophelia—one of the most famous suicides in the Western canon—only pretends to go mad and takes a Romeo and Juliet-style potion to feign her death. The author reveals that she survived her supposed suicide on the very first page of the novel. It’s a much later reveal in the film, which also takes 40 minutes to get to the events of the play. During a long set-up, the audience learns that Ophelia has a great love of books and learning, and that her affair with Hamlet is quite serious; indeed, the characters end up secretly marrying. The film leaves the biggest surprise for last—that Ophelia had Hamlet’s child.

Despite such wholesale alteration, Klein clearly shows her great love for the works of Shakespeare throughout the novel. However, some of her references may rankle fellow aficionados of the Bard. At one point, for instance, a minor character glares at Ophelia “like the proverbial green-eyed monster.” This term is attributed to Shakespeare himself—but he coined it in Othello, which he wrote after Hamlet. At another point, Hamlet offhandedly calls one of Ophelia’s witticisms “a hit, a palpable hit,” which feels like an empty reference in this context; in the original play, a similar line is used in much darker circumstances—describing a fencing move in a match that leads to Hamlet’s death. Worst of all, in the last quarter of the novel, Klein has Ophelia take refuge at a literal nunnery and unnecessarily bolts Christian themes onto the story. These are all thankfully excised from the film version.

That said, the movie has its own problems. Ridley is a fine actress, but director Claire McCarthy, who directed 2008’s The Waiting City, and screenwriter Semi Chellas, a TV writer and producer with several episodes of Mad Men to her credit, don’t give her many meaty scenes; mostly, she watches and waits. MacKay and Owen get somewhat showier roles, but the filmmakers really go out of their way to give Watts lots to do. For instance, there’s an awkward and confusing subplot involving Gertrude’s sister, a potion-maker—who’s also played by Watts. Gertrude also gets to kill Claudius in this version, by plunging a sword into his chest. However, in Klein’s book and the original play, it’s Hamlet that kills Claudius—and one can argue that this is what makes the entire story a tragedy. In their zeal to shine a light on Watts, the filmmakers seem to have forgotten that, in the end, “the play’s the thing.”

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.

Above image: Daisy Ridley as “Ophelia” and Naomi Watts as “Gertrude” in Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films release.