Letters to Juliet (Amanda Seyfried)

(Amazon UK link)

I watched the film ‘Letters to Juliet’ with relatives just eighteen months ago. But my husband was given it on blu-ray for Christmas, after putting it on his wishlist, and had not seen it. So, as I recalled enjoying it, I was happy to watch it again even after such a brief period.

While I had recalled the general outline, I had quite forgotten the opening scenes. Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) lives in New York with her boyfriend Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal). He is soon to be opening a new restaurant, but has agreed to go on a short holiday with her, to Verona in Italy. Sophie is a professional fact-checker who would love to become a published writer.

Victor is very fond of Sophie, but his real passion is cooking, and he’s very excited to be able to meet with some of his suppliers in Italy. Sophie goes with him for the first, including wine-tasting. At the second, looking at cheeses, she feels a bit left out and bored. And when he decides to take a few days meeting yet another supplier, she decides to stay in Verona and do some sight-seeing.  

She comes across a wall, supposedly part of Juliet’s house (created for tourists who want to see where Shakespeare’s Juliet lived) where women are writing and affixing notes. Sophie even more intrigued when a group of women appear and take the notes away in baskets. Her journalistic instincts are aroused, and she follows them…

One thing leads to another, and the bulk of the story involves Sophie travelling around Italy with the wonderful Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) who hasn’t seen Lorenzo, the person she fell in love with fifty years earlier. She is accompanied by her reluctant grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan). He is, understandably, annoyed that her soulmate was apparently not his own grandfather, and thinks she has come on a wild goose-chase. 

There’s quite a bit of gentle humour in the film, much of which I had entirely forgotten, as the group find more and more people with the same name, in widely different circumstances. There’s also some wonderful chemistry between Sophie and Claire, who feel a sense of kindred immediately. 

One minor criticism of the film is that Claire is only supposed to be 65, but she looks about ten years older. Quick research revealed that Vanessa Redgrave was in fact 73 when this film was made. She’s still active and attractive, but is also treated by Charlie as if she were in her 70s and quite frail. She fell in love at 15, which is why she had to return to the UK with her parents; but I felt it should have been sixty years earlier rather than fifty. 

However it’s a minor thing; Vanessa Redgrave is the most wonderful actress, and I could entirely believe in Claire, putting aside the problem that she looked and behaved older than 65. Sophie, too, is entirely believable, and we loved the passionate Victor, who injects some humour into the early part of the film. We weren’t so impressed with Charlie, however. His accent felt a bit over-plummy; we later discovered that he’s Australian, so his English accent wasn’t authentic. We got used it; but his gradual change of character didn’t seem entirely authentic. He’s quite rude when he first appears, and antagonistic towards Sophie and there’s no real explanation as to why he softens and changes.

But that’s also minor, as the real love story is the one that - inevitably - is finally fulfilled, with some very poignant scenes. 

Rated PG, this is free of anything explicit, and the only nudity is that on some of the classical Italian statues. The film has only the very mildest of bad language - and not even much of that. A story like this isn’t likely to be of interest to children, but I would recommend it highly to anyone over the age of about 15 who likes gentle romantic stories. 

There are some extras which we watched: a short ‘making of’ documentary which explains some of the background; also some deleted or expanded scenes that weren’t used.

Letters to Juliet

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews