Letters to Juliet Synopsis: Sophie dreams of becoming a writer and travels to Verona, Italy where she meets the “Secretaries of Juliet”.
Sophie Hall (Amanda Seyfried) is a fact-checker for a local paper who aspires to be a full-time writer. Her fiance Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), is a chef weeks away from opening his own restaurant. The two decide to take a pre-wedding honeymoon to Verona, because they won’t have the time once Victor’s restaurant opens.
While in Verona, Sophie wants to sightsee and explore the city, but Victor is being wined and dined by various food and wine vendors. While Victor is off at a wine auction, Sophie explores Verona alone. She comes across a small courtyard of women who are all writing letters to Juliet (from Romeo and Juliet). The letters are placed on the wall below Juliet’s balcony. At the end of the day, a group of women who call themselves the Secretaries of Juliet take the letters and respond to the despondent and heartbroken women.
Intrigued, Sophie finds a fifty-year-old letter lost inside a loose stone in the wall and feels compelled to write back to the letter’s author. Her name is Claire, and she had written to Juliet after leaving Lorenzo, the man she had wanted to marry, knowing her parents would never approve.
Sophie’s letter reaches Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), who travels to Verona with her prickly grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan), to finally track down Lorenzo and apologize for leaving him so long ago. Given that Victor is much more interested in the food and wine of the area, Sophie decides to accompany Claire and Charlie in their search, realizing there could be an interesting story for her to write.
First things first. The cinematography in Letters to Juliet is exquisite. There are so many soft, beautiful shots of the Italian countryside that it is easy to get swept up in the romanticism of the setting. Even when the story was letting me down, I could still appreciate how gorgeous the movie was, which helped keep it from becoming a complete disappointment.
There is nothing special about the characters. They’re all basic cookie cutouts of characters we’ve seen before. Vanessa Redgrave is a cinematic icon who should have probably been given more to do, but I enjoyed watching her emotional take as Claire, a woman seeking the love of her life fifty years after leaving him behind. I even enjoyed Seyfried and Egan as two young people who initially don’t get along and spend their time bickering over Claire’s situation before finding some common ground (and attraction).
Bernal is a fantastic actor, but boy, was his talent wasted in this movie. His character is a bit of a fast-talking doofus, obsessed with his career while blatantly ignoring Sophie’s interests and desires. He’s the one-dimensional throwaway fiance designed to make us sympathize with poor Sophie and root for her to find the man who sparks the right passion. This role could have gone to a lesser actor, and it would have made no difference.
To be fair, I enjoyed certain aspects of Letters to Juliet. I loved the introductions of the Secretaries of Juliet (which actually exists), and I enjoyed Claire’s interactions with all of the wrong Lorenzos. The moment she finds the Lorenzo she left so many years ago (played by Redgrave’s real-life husband, Franco Nero), it’s such a romantic moment that I could put aside all of the issues I had with the movie… for a few moments anyway.
My biggest disappointment stemmed from how different the movie’s end felt compared to the rest. Maybe Sophie and Charlie had better chemistry when bickering because their confession of love felt so out of place compared to how their interactions had been up to that moment. It was like someone else took the script to write the last scene. The dialogue was generic, the setup was eye-roll-inducing, and neither character acted like the characters I had been watching for the previous hour and a half.
Overall I found Letters to Juliet to be a bit bland. I might have enjoyed it more had the romance ended differently, perhaps in a way that didn’t remind me so much of the Hallmark Channel. But Redgrave was fantastic, and if you want to escape from this world for a while, it won’t hurt to put on Letters to Juliet and get lost in the gorgeous Italian scenery.
Watched: 03/31/2020
Notable Song: Love Story by Taylor Swift
