Valentine’s Marathon: Letters to Juliet (2010)

This 4th movie in my marathon was in last year’s favorite romantic comedies. That list changes quite a bit over the year as it goes on. Lets see if I still have the same love for it this year.

Director: Gary Winick

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Christopher Egan, Vanessa Redgrave

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is a fact checker in New York City but she dreams of being a writer, however, the opportunity had not shown up. However, she is engaged and soon to be married with a future restaurant owner and perfectionist cook, Victor. They are scheduled to have a pre-honeymoon to Verona, Italy. The second objective is for Victor to meet his suppliers also. When they arrive, Victor gets carried away and Sophie ends up going sightseeing by herself. One day, she visits the House of Juliet where Romeo and Juliet had met. Its also here that women from all over the world go to write the letters to Juliet about their problems: family, illness and love. As Sophie sits in the area facing the wall and starts writing, she sees a woman come by at the end of the day to take down the letters and put them into a basket with care. She is curious as to what she is going to do with them and follows it. She then meets a few Italian women who call themselves the “secretaries of Juliet”. They take their own time to write back to each and every letter that is left there. Sophie decides to help them out and in the process, finds a letter stuck behind a brick in the wall of the house of Juliet that has been nestled there for 50 years.

She decides to write back. A while later, a guy comes by to find them who is the grandson, Charlie (Christopher Egan) of the woman who wrote the letter, who has accompanied his grandmother, Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) there but doesn’t think its a good thing that Sophie has written back so long after to give his grandmother false hopes. Together, they embark to look for Claire’s true love, her Lorenzo. When the first stop proves to be wrong, Claire decides to have Sophie tag along to try to seek out Lorenzo in the Tuscany area over the next few days. As they search for Lorenzo, Charlie and Sophie become closer and understand his other a bit better.

This is a cute romantic comedy. What makes this movie special is the message it wants to send out through the concept of true love never being too late, even if it was 50 years later. At the same time, a young romance is developing. The story is quite generic so it won’t catch a lot of people’s immediate attention. However, I do remember that when I had first seen this one. I had bought it because I had just finished a really awesome novel called Juliet. Nothing connected to it but it just made me want to look at different takes of this story even if this is more just a tangent.

Vanessa Redgrave was pretty good at doing her role and she was the experienced actress here. Amanda Seyfried does what she does best and I appreciate her roles usually. Her vibe that she gave off with Christopher Egan. The little bickering and the growing spark that happened was at times entertaining.

Plus, there is some amazing Italian scenery. During the driving scenes and the vineyards and other locations, its all very nicely set. You know I have to mention this. They used pretty upbeat feel good music. I mean the theme song was wonderful music by Colbie Caillat and Taylor Swift. The movie started with a nice little feel good song that always makes me smile called You Got Me by Colbie Caillat and ends with Love Story from Taylor Swift.