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The Love Letter
USA 1999
Reviewed by Leslie Felperin
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Helen is a divorced single mother who owns a bookshop in Loblolly-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. One day while opening the mail, she finds an unsigned love letter, addressed only to "Darling", which speaks of the impossibility of the writer ever being with its addressee. Assuming it was meant for her, Helen wonders who her admirer could be. Her college-boy employee Johnny finds the letter and thinks Helen wrote it and intentionally left it for him to find. He drops a hint to let Helen know he's read it, which makes her think he's the letter's author. Meanwhile, Helen's best friend, the shop's manager Janet, finds the letter and assumes local fireman George wrote it for her, even though he has been carrying a torch for years for Helen. Meanwhile, Helen has started a secret affair with Johnny but still goes out on a couple of dates with George. When Helen tells Janet the letter wasn't for her, they argue and fall out.
Meanwhile, young Jennifer has developed a crush on Johnny and cuts all her hair off when he rebuffs her advances. Helen's mother Lillian and grandmother Eleanor return from an extended holiday, and Lillian comes out as a lesbian to Helen, revealing she's been in love for years with local historian Constance Scattergoods. The town's policeman Dan finds the letter and, pretending he wrote it, proposes with it to his girlfriend. Helen breaks off with Johnny in favour of George. Constance and Lillian find the letter and sit musing on how it had been lost - Constance had written it to Lillian years ago.
Review
A romantic comedy focusing, unusually this year, on characters past puberty, The Love Letter seems genetically engineered to serve as video popcorn fuel for girlie nights in, its theatrical release a mere formality (although it has done surprisingly well at the box office in the US). Although ineffably slight with its soapy focus on a mature single mother torn between two equally toothsome if bland suitors, this film more than adequately meets its target audience's demands for cheerfully lachrymose drama. A certain bittersweetness - like milk chocolate chased with cheap beer - bubbles out its thematic concern with the 'wrong' turns and missed opportunities of love. Because Helen never found a secret note in a postcard sent years ago, she didn't get it together with George; in the present, because she finds an anonymous letter she ends up embroiled in an affair with the ardent young Johnny.
It's the sort of too-neat parallelism that screenwriting courses encourage, though presumably the conceit originates in Cathleen Schine's source novel, which is probably also to blame for the sickly, homey prose of the titular love letter in which the author waxes lyrical about its correspondent "when I tie my shoe... when I peel an orange."
Funnily enough, the inspiration to make the film apparently sprang from it's leading actress and producer Kate Capshaw reading a review of the book. Legend has it that she bought the rights to the book out of her own pocket, but the $30,000 wasn't even noticed missing from the family cookie jar by her husband, Steven Spielberg. Nonetheless, his DreamWorks studio has produced the film, and a happy-slappy family atmosphere cosies over the proceedings like a backseat tartan rug (one of the Spielberg enfants even has a walk-on part).
Director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (formerly based in Hong Kong and director of Comrades, Almost a Love Story) coaxes warm, low-key and likeable ensemble performances from his cast of television actors and lesser-known stars and creates the occasional soft-focus effect by shooting through age-warped windows. On the evidence of the easy competence he displays here, he shouldn't have much trouble securing future work in Hollywood.
Credits
- Producers
- Sarah Pillsbury
- Midge Sanford
- Kate Capshaw
- Screenplay
- Maria Maggenti
- Based on the novel by
- Cathleen Schine
- Director of Photography
- Tami Reiker
- Editor
- Jacqueline Cambas
- Production Designer
- Andrew Jackness
- Music
- Luis Bacalov
- ©DreamWorks LLC
- Production Companies
- DreamWorks Pictures presents a Sanford/Pillsbury production
- Executive Producers
- Beau Flynn
- Stefan Simchowitz
- Co-producer
- Karen Koch
- Production Controller
- Jim Turner
- Production Co-ordinator
- Chris White
- Unit Production Manager
- Karen Koch
- Location Manager
- Benjamin Dewey
- Post-production
- Executive:
- Martin Cohen
- Supervisor:
- Lisa Dennis Kennedy
- Co-ordinator:
- Lisa Marie Serra
- Assistant Directors
- Justin Muller
- Mary Ellen Woods
- Molly Mayeux
- Kristen Ploucha
- Script Supervisor
- Deirdre Horgan
- Casting
- Mali Finn
- Associate:
- Emily Schweber
- ADR Voice:
- L.A. MadDogs
- Camera Operators
- Brian Heller
- Austin De Besche
- Digital Visual Effects
- Perpetual Motion Pictures
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Richard Malzahn
- Visual Effects Producer:
- Kimberly Sylvester
- Compositor:
- René Clark
- Special Effects
- J.C. Brotherhood
- Art Director
- Carl Sprague
- Set Decorator
- Tracey A. Doyle
- Costume Designer
- Tracy Tynan
- Costume Supervisor
- Debbie Holbrook
- Key Make-up Artist
- Melanie Hughes
- Make-up Artist
- Rebecca Alling
- Key Hairstylist
- Frances Mathias
- Hairstylist
- Rita Parillo
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Music Performed by
- Orchestra di Roma
- Recorder/Mixer
- Franco Patrignani
- Additional Mixer
- Luciani Torani
- Musicians
- Bandoneon:
- Héctor Ulises Passarella
- Violin/Mandolin:
- Riccardo Pellegrino
- Violin:
- Ettore Pellegrino
- Clarinet:
- Franco Ferrant
- Orchestrations
- Luis Bacalov
- Juan Bacalov
- Executive in Charge of Music
- Todd Homme
- Music Editor
- Sharon Smith
- Soundtrack
- "I'm in the Mood for Love" by Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, performed by Louis Armstrong; "Only the Lonely" by Roy Orbison, Joe Melson, performed by Roy Orbison; "Love Potion #9" by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, performed by The Clovers; "Si mi chiamano Mimi" from "La Bohème" composed by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa & Luigi Illica; "Feelin' Alright" by Dave Mason, performed by Joe Cocker; "Recondita armonia", "Presto su Mario Mario" from "Tosca" by composed by Giacomo Puccini, libretto: Giuseppe Giacosa & Luigi Illica, performed by Slovak Philharmonic Chorus & Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra; "I've Never Been in Love Before" by Frank Loesser, performed by Chet Baker
- Production Sound Mixer
- John Patrick Pritchett
- Recordist
- Mark Kalm
- Re-recording Mixers
- André Perreault
- Derek Marcil
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Victoria Rose Sampson
- David Hankins
- Sound Editors
- Mike Babcock
- Bruce Tanis
- Dialogue Editors
- David Beadle
- Sonya Henry
- Lawrence Goeb
- Jane Boegel
- ADR
- Voices:
- Rosemary Alexander
- Luis Bacalov
- Steve Bulen
- Mitch Carter
- Robert Clotworthy
- David Cowgill
- Wendy Cutler
- Moosie Drier
- Jake Eissinmann
- Elisa Gabrielli
- Jackie Gonneau
- Nicholas Guest
- Bridgette Hoffman
- Richard Horvitz
- Kellyann Kelso
- Matthew Laborteaux
- Edie Mirman
- Sarah Sampson
- Melanie Spore
- Claudette Wells
- Lynnanne Zager
- Foley
- Artists:
- Dale Perry
- Zane Bruce
- Elizabeth Rainey
- Mixer:
- Cary Butler
- Dog Handler
- Carleen White
- Cast
- Kate Capshaw
- Helen MacFarquhar
- Blythe Danner
- Lillian
- Ellen DeGeneres
- Janet
- Geraldine McEwan
- Constance Scattergoods
- Julianne Nicholson
- Jennifer
- Tom Everett Scott
- Johnny
- Tom Selleck
- George Mathias
- Gloria Stuart
- Eleanor
- Bill Buell
- Officer Dan
- Alice Drummond
- postal clerk
- Erik Jensen
- Ray
- Margaret Ann Brady
- Selma
- Jessica Capshaw
- Kelly
- Walter Covell
- post office customer
- Patrick Donnelly
- bookstore customer
- Lucas Hall
- Christian Harmony
- Christopher Nee
- garbage men
- Marilyn Rockafellow
- Vivian
- Breanne Smith
- Emily
- Sasha Spielberg
- girl with sparkler
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- United International Pictures (UK) Ltd
- 7,868 feet
- 87 minutes 25 seconds
- Dolby Digital/Digital DTS sound/SDDS
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Technicolor