An affair to faintly remember
THE BIG RELEASE THE LAST LETTER FROM YOUR LOVER 12A ★★★✩✩
WHEN’S the last time you escaped into a proper old-school (yet brandnew) romantic weepie? Well, grab a big box of choccies and some tissues and prepare to wallow.
Adapted from a JoJo Moyes bestseller, The Last Letter From Your Lover interweaves two love stories present and past. Felicity Jones gets top billing as Ellie, an ambitious, hot-mess modern-day journalist who takes time off from humping and dumping unsuitable men to uncover a long-buried secret.
While researching an article with the help of a cute archivist (a well-cast and quietly unusual Nabhaan Rizwan), Ellie stumbles across a cache of love letters from 1965. Cue flashbacks to the history of Jennifer Stirling (Shailene Woodley, The Fault In Our Stars), the neglected American wife of a domineering mega-rich British industrialist (Joe Alwyn as the villain of the piece).
Jennifer, it turns out, has amnesia (it’s that kind of story) and so is trying to piece together her own forgotten affair with a dashing foreign correspondent (Callum Turner, War & Peace and The Capture).
Despite boasting a hot millennial cast, there is an unabashed nostalgia about this exercise, a yearning for a time when passion was declared via handwritten post rather than pinged at your face over WhatsApp. Think The Notebook meets An Affair To Remember, even if it’s far more forgettable.
Woodley and Turner aren’t an obvious on-screen pairing yet they thrillingly capture that first rush of attraction, where every touch is electrifying. Jones manages to be non-annoying as the scatty journo. There are some fabulous hats.
Yet it’s all so generic and contrived that, as a film, this never fully ignites. A bit like the recent Netflix remake of Rebecca, the production design is the most seductive element. You want to escape on a vintage sports car round the Riviera? You got it. Not one to push the envelope, is what we’re saying here. Still, it’s a satisfying way to spend a rainy, possibly hungover, Sunday afternoon at the pictures, when all you want is to stuff your face with sweet stuff and have a happy cry.
Out Friday in cinemas