‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’ Review: Stylish but Standard Romance

The past is not just another country, but a completely different movie, in “The last letter from your lover, a pair of tightly bound love stories – one present, one past – faintly linked but almost completely different in tone, style, and emotional impression. Firstly, Shailene Woodley and Callum Turner fall in love in an obstacle-filled romance, set in the 1960s of chance encounters, missed connections, and tearful train station dates. download for the classic Hollywood horror film “An Affair to Remember”. In the second, Felicity Jones is a hybrid between Carrie Bradshaw and Bridget Jones, which only happens to fall into the hands of the clumsy archivist, who assists her in putting the old story together, before the stories merge in a rewrite of “The Notebook” was rewritten neatly, more English.

She previously made a name for herself with the dramatic, Sundance-inspired wild-girl comedy “Never Goin’ Back”, directed Augustine Frizzell It doesn’t seem like a clear fit with any of the foggy, unsophisticated miniseries that make up “The Last Letter from Your Sweetheart”: Sure, she doesn’t have one. script hand-in-hand, which playwright Nick Payne and author Esta Spalding drew with great inspiration from Jojo Moyes’ 2008 bestseller, the same famous romance novelist wrote “Me Before You”.

However, Frizzell tackles the story’s stage with some directing, a commitment to saturated romanticism, sublime style, and an impossibly brazen storytelling involvement irresistible – and unfortunately the rest of the movie feels anonymous and less relevant in comparison. Even the most general, however, this letter from an unlikely woman fills a gap in the adult, female-oriented summer schedule and will find important recipients. mind when it’s released on Netflix in the US and in pond cinemas.

The film opens with an onscreen quote from Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms,” ​​scrawled across the screen like an early love story: “Why, honey, I’m not living at all without you.” It’s a somewhat misguided choice of literary flourish, and not least because its star-coupled classic is in fact Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop.” Suffice it to say that “The Last Letter” is a monstrously long way from even Hemingway’s prim, even at his most romantic. The love letters that tell the film’s story over the decades are flowery, heart-wrenching messages and pleas to die – like, the film observes simply and subtly. , feels strangely odd in the age of instant messaging and eggplant emojis.

Their author is Anthony (Turner), a cranky London financial journalist surrounded by Jennifer (Woodley), the prestigious American wife of wealthy, wooden-hearted business magnate Larry (Joe Alwyn). ), whom he met in the summer of 1965 on a Frenchman. Riviera trips to sun-drenched villages and sparkling yacht cruises. (The film may portray Larry as a capitalist villain, but drinking the couple’s lifestyle with gilded pleasure.) The attraction is mutual and intense: In the roles could have been. Played by Burton and Taylor at the time of editing, Turner and Woodley have something of a lip-biting, realistic chemistry that keeps us rooted to their union even as the screenwriters try their best. force to keep them apart, until selective amnesia occurs, Hollywood-style. Turner, who drew the short straw among the male stars of the movie “Emma.” Last year, emerged here as a suitable yet charismatic romantic lead.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Jones plays Ellie, a single journalist, romantically wounded at a London newspaper, whom even Nancy Meyers might appeal to for being a man. unreasonable. Apparently in a dream contract where she has a week to write an obituary, she stumbles across Anthony’s fiery, mysterious initials during her research and right away. was immediately cast aside, determined to find out who, why and when of this seemed unresolved. Supporting her in this regard is the sweet, shy archive manager Rory (a lovable Nabhaan Rizwan), whose attraction to the eerie, self-directed Ellie is dictated from the script right from the start. the first encounter is pretty cute, but never complemented by the relatable relationship between the characters or the actors who play them.

Frizzell, a sense, didn’t care much: She left her heart in 1965, when she, DP George Steel (“The Aeronauts”) and costume designer Anna Robbins (“Downton Abbey”) caught Hands on creating the most gorgeous romantic period film as classically as possible, all the sexy vibrant skin tones, reflections and neon glow in the rain that the frame is as soft as normal velvet. I feel like I’m about to disappear completely. The relationship between Jennifer and Anthony may have been delicately conceived, but Frizzell has the gift of getting her audience to invest only in sheer beauty: The lost frames here are reminiscent of Vincente Minnelli or Wong Kar -Wai, before going back to an overall aesthetic that’s less distinctive but nonetheless pleasant luxury. Will the rest of “The Last Letter From Your Lover” make a rather lavish, concerted effort to seduce: A person leaves the movie thinking they’re not making them the way they once did. , even if they do it all at once.