The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Now and then
‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’ pulls you in with its parallel storylines, classical seasonings
You need not be a fan of the romance novels of Jojo Moyes — or even of romantic stories in general — to become rather sucked into the world of “The Last Letter From Your Lover.”
Based on Moyes’ 2008 novel of the same name, director Augustine Frizzell’s well-crafted adaptation possesses a lush, classic feel as it tells parallel love stories taking place in 1965 and today.
Debuting this week on Netflix In the U.S., “The Last Letter for Your Lover” is an engaging and compelling, if also slightly flawed, piece of storytelling.
We’re willing to live with those imperfections, as they may be a result of screenwriters Nick Payne and Esta Spalding paring down a 500-page novel into a tale that can be told in a little under two hours.
The mood is set with an on-screen text from a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”: “Why darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.”
We know a burning love, a desperate desire, will be at the heart of “The Last Letter From Your Lover,” but we are unsure at first in what form that will take.
That we, the viewers, are a little off-balance at first is a result of one of the story’s central characters feeling the same way, as Shailene Woodley’s Jennifer Stirling returns from a stay in the hospital to a lavish home
that is as unfamiliar to her as is her husband, Laurence (Joe Alwyn, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”), a wealthy industrialist.
“Everything’s going to be fine, darling,” says Laurence, whom she later mistakenly calls Lewis that night bed.
In the present day, we meet Felicity Jones’ Ellie Haworth, a London-based journalist whose newspaper
coworkers are annoyed with her for ditching them for some random guy the night before at a bar, where they were celebrating a birthday.
(We actually are introduced to Ellie in the bed of this gentleman, whom she calls “Rob” and is corrected by him that it’s “Andrew.” We worry that “The Last Letter From Your Lover” will be loaded with
this kind of heavy-handed parallelism between its two female protagonists, but that fear proves to be unfounded.)
Ellie’s work on a feature story leads her to the newspaper’s archives, where a polite but inflexible archivist, Rory (Nabhaan Rizwan, “1917”), informs her she cannot just drop by like this but instead must make an online appointment.
On a return visit, with Rory having had time to retrieve the materials she needs, Ellie discovers an old letter from one lover to another, and her interest is greatly piqued.
In 1965, we already have seen Laurence hide such a letter in a desk drawer under some papers. Nonetheless, Jennifer — who experiences brief memories of a busy street on a dark, rainy night — discovers another one of these letters inside a book.
Both women embark
upon a trail that leads to Anthony O’Hare (Callum Turner, “Emma”), a financial journalist. In flashback sequences, we see the Stirlings host Anthony so he may write a profile on Laurence.
The first impressions shared by Jennifer and Anthony are anything but positive, but they begin to see each other more favorably once Laurence is called away on business, as he often is.
As for Ellie, who not long ago got out of a years-long relationship, she begins to develop chemistry with the quiet and kind Rory, who becomes invested in her hunt for more letters — or possibly more in her.
“The Last Letter From Your Lover” loses a little steam in its third act as it meanders toward its rather expected conclusions, but this nonetheless is an enjoyable journey.
You may not fall deeply in love with “The Last Letter From Your Lover,” but expect to develop at least a significant crush.
Never the most dynamic of actors, Woodley (“Divergent,” “Adrift”) is mildly interesting here — if perhaps not to the point where the well-traveled Anthony would fall “I don’t live at all when I’m not with you”-level in love with her.
Jones (“The Theory of Everything,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”), on the other hand, is typically dynamic, and she infuses Ellie with a quirky likability. We’re still not saying we’d want the movie to run much longer, but we would have liked the story of Ellie and Rory to be fleshed out a bit more.
Relatedly, Laurence is an underdeveloped character. He’s an absentee husband, to be sure, but we’re not sure he deserves a cheating wife — at least until later in the film.
Still, expect your investment in the characters to hold steady thanks to the strong direction of Frizzell, whose 2018 debut was fairly well-received after its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. She is aided by the soft lighting used well by director of photography George Steel (2018’s “Robin Hood”) and production design of James Merifield (“Mary Queen of Scots”).
You may not fall deeply in love with “The Last Letter From Your Lover,” but expect to develop at least a significant crush.