The Last Letter from Your Lover
Felicity Jones and Shailene Woodley are united across the decades in a catatonic romance.
Past blast: Felicity Jones and Nabhaan Rizwan
To quote L.P. Hartley, “the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” To quote Felicity Jones, in the incarnation of befuddled journalist Ellie Haworth: “The past can be intoxicating, it can draw you in, create an illusion that things were better, you were happier, or experiences were richer back then. It will also debilitate you.” It’s the best line – and moment – in Augustine Frizzell’s movie. However, this time-bridging romance paints the 1960s as if they were the 1930s, embalmed in a deathly, underlit pallor that suffocates any possibility of romantic frisson. The premise of star-cross’d lovers connected across time has provided the emotional spark for works as varied as Neil LaBute’s Possession (2002) and Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook (2004). But the most unrepentantly romantic of all was Claude Lelouch’s Toute une vie (1974) which, over the course of 150 madly stylish minutes, unravelled the temporal coils of true ardour, culminating in the spontaneous combustion of ‘love at first sight.’ In The Last Letter from your Lover there is little style, let alone intoxication, in a catatonic Mills & Boon saga that has all the romantic chemistry of wet porridge.
Following a brief, elegant credit sequence, the film opens in London in 1965, but feels far, far from the Swinging London of the Beatles’ Help! of the same year. Our damaged heroine is Jennifer Stirling, played by Shailene Woodley kitted out in what seems to be Jackie Kennedy’s entire wardrobe. Jennifer is in a loveless marriage to the cruel and aloof industrialist Laurence (Joe Alwyn) and is trying to piece her life back together after a car accident has robbed her of her memory. In the present day, scatty Ellie is trying to help her, having been assigned a feature on the recently deceased editor of the paper for which she works, The London Chronicle. With a weak attempt at Richard Curtis cutesyness, Ellie is repeatedly stalled in her attempts to access the paper’s physical records by the formal, nervous archivist Rory McCallan (Nabhaan Rizwan). Then Ellie’s research is waylaid by the discovery of some love letters, which prove entirely more enthralling than the life of her late publisher…
At times it feels like Felicity Jones is attempting to channel the dizzy energy of Emilia Clarke, who starred in the slushy, vivacious tearjerker Me Before You (2016). The latter was adapted by Jojo Moyes from her own best-selling 2012 book and it’s a shame the writer wasn’t allowed to execute the same duties on this misjudged reworking of her 2008 novel. Not only does Felicity Jones seem ill-suited to illuminate such lightweight material (even though she sparkled in Chalet Girl – but that was ten years ago), but her co-star and co-producer Shailene Woodley displays all the personality of a courgette. Both actresses have excelled in dramatic work, yet seem lost in this dour romance. Perpetually filmed in shadow and sluggish in pace, it is constantly playing against its genre and one prays for an unexpected flourish. But, no, it chugs along in a low-key, ponderous monotone, banking on the viewer’s patience and curiosity to see it through to the end.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Felicity Jones, Shailene Woodley, Callum Turner, Joe Alwyn, Nabhaan Rizwan, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Appleton, Christian Brassington, Alice Orr-Ewing, Lee Knight, Zoe Boyle, Ben Cross, Diana Kent, Atheena Frizzell, Ricardo Gilfillan, Joann Condon, Hero Howard, David Sibley, Claire Brown.
Dir Augustine Frizzell, Pro Simone Urdl, Jennifer Weiss, Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin, Ex Pro Ruth Coady, Shana Eddy-Grouf, Felicity Jones, Jojo Moyes and Shailene Woodley, Screenplay Nick Payne and Esta Spalding, from the novel by Jojo Moyes, Ph George Steel, Pro Des James Merifield, Ed Melanie Ann Oliver, Music Daniel Hart, Costumes Anna Robbins, Sound Robert Ireland, Dialect coach Liz Himelstein.
Blueprint Pictures/The Film Farm/Canal+/Ciné+-StudioCanal.
109 mins. UK/France. 2021. Rel: 6 August 2021. Cert. 12A.
