Letters to Juliet

Letters to Juliet
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Gary Winick
Produced by
Written by
Starring
Music by Andrea Guerra
Cinematography Marco Pontecorvo
Edited by Bill Pankow
Distributed by Summit Entertainment
Release date
  • April 25, 2010 (2010-04-25) (Tribeca Film Festival)
  • May 14, 2010 (2010-05-14)
Running time
 105 minutes
Country United States
Italy
Language English, Italian
Budget $30 million[1]
Box office $80 million [2]

Letters to Juliet is a 2010 American romantic drama film starring Amanda Seyfried, Christopher Egan, Vanessa Redgrave, Gael García Bernal and Franco Nero. This was the final film of director Gary Winick. The film was released theatrically in North America and other countries on May 14, 2010. The idea for the film was inspired by the 2006 non-fiction book Letters to Juliet, by Lise Friedman and Ceil Friedman, which chronicles the phenomenon of letter-writing to Shakespeare's most famous romantic heroine.

Plot

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is a young American woman who works for The New Yorker as a fact checker. She goes on a pre-honeymoon with her chef fiancé Victor (Gael García Bernal) to Verona, Italy. Victor is unmoved by the romance of Italy and uses his time to research his soon-to-open restaurant, often neglecting Sophie. Sophie accidentally discovers an unanswered "letter to Juliet" by a Claire Smith from 1957, one of thousands of missives left in Juliet's Verona courtyard that are typically answered by the "Secretaries of Juliet". She answers it and within a week the now elderly Claire Smith (Vanessa Redgrave) arrives in Verona with her handsome barrister grandson Charlie Wyman (Christopher Egan). Claire and Sophie take an instant liking to each other, but Charlie and Sophie do not get along.

Following the advice in Sophie's reply, Claire decides to look for her long-lost love, Lorenzo Bartolini (Franco Nero). Sophie, thinking Claire's story might help her with her writing career and has genuine interest in the story, helps Claire. The two find out that there are many Lorenzo Bartolinis living in the area. After many days of searching for the right Lorenzo, they find that one is dead. Charlie blames Sophie for his grandmother's sadness. He accuses her of not knowing what real loss is. Claire, witnessing the dispute, tells Charlie he was wrong and that Sophie's mother had walked away from her when she was a little girl. The following day, Claire insists that Charlie apologize to Sophie at breakfast, which he does. After dinner, Sophie talks to Charlie about love, and the two kiss. The following morning is their last day of searching for Lorenzo. On a whim, Claire points out a vineyard to Charlie and asks if he could stop so they can have a farewell drink for Sophie. As Charlie drives down the road, Claire sees a young man who looks exactly like her Lorenzo. They discover the man is Lorenzo Bartolini's grandson, and Claire and the elder Lorenzo reunite.

Back in New York, Sophie breaks up with Victor before returning to Verona to attend Claire and Lorenzo's wedding. She finds Charlie with another woman, Patricia, and runs out crying. Charlie comes out to find her, and she admits she loves him but tells him to go back to Patricia. Charlie reveals that Patricia is his cousin and tells Sophie he loves her. He climbs up the vine to the balcony, recreating the original famous scene from Romeo and Juliet, but accidentally falls down, and they kiss as he lies on the ground.

Cast

  • Amanda Seyfried as Sophie Hall, a fact checker living in New York.
  • Christopher Egan as Charlie Wyman, Claire's grandson, who has trouble coming to terms with his grandmother loving anyone other than his late grandfather. His parents died in a car accident.
  • Vanessa Redgrave as Claire Smith-Wyman, the girl who wrote the letter to Juliet 50 years before, and is hoping to find her Lorenzo.
  • Franco Nero as Lorenzo Bartolini, Claire's love interest. Nero is Redgrave's real life husband. Roger Ebert, having interviewed both Nero and Redgrave on the set of Camelot, noted how much of the love story between their characters is nearly autobiographical.[3]
  • Gael García Bernal as Victor, Sophie's chef fiancé who is easily preoccupied with anything having to do with food, cooking, and the opening of his restaurant.
  • Luisa Ranieri as Isabella, the most important of the four original Juliet's secretaries in the film and a friend of Sophie's.
  • Marina Massironi as Francesca, one of Juliet's secretaries.
  • Lidia Biondi as Donatella, one of Juliet's secretaries.
  • Milena Vukotic as Maria, one of Juliet's secretaries.
  • Oliver Platt as Bobby, the editor of The New Yorker who wants Sophie to remain a fact-checker.
  • Daniel Baldock as Lorenzo Jr., the older of Lorenzo's sons.
  • Stefano Guerrini as Lorenzo III, grandson of Lorenzo.
  • Ashley Lilley as Patricia, Charlie's cousin who has the same name as his ex-girlfriend.
  • Luisa De Santis as Angelina, Isabella's mother.

Release and reception

Critical reception

Letters to Juliet received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 40% based on 151 reviews, with an average score of 5.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads "Letters to Juliet has a refreshingly earnest romantic charm, but it suffers from limp dialogue and an utter lack of surprises."[4] Metacritic gives it an average score of 50 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[5]

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called the film "cheerfully ridiculous", pointing out the differing accents from both Amanda Seyfried and Christopher Egan, but gave praise to Vanessa Redgrave for a "likably, if not quite intentionally mad performance."[6] Amy Biancolli of the San Francisco Chronicle was also positive towards Redgrave, describing her performance as being "elegant, clear-eyed and nurturing" and noting that she "commands the corniest dialogue to stand up and sound like poetry."[7] Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News praised both Redgrave and Seyfried, saying the former brings "a lovely gravity to the lightweight proceedings" and the latter displays "an unusually levelheaded presence."[8] Roger Ebert was aware of the film's genre and how it operates but that he didn't care about that: "I know the ending is preordained from the setup. I know the characters are broad and comforting stereotypes. In this case, I simply don't care. Sometimes we have personal reasons for responding to a film."[3]

Bill Gibron from PopMatters criticized the film for having two conflicting stories where only one is interesting, characters that make idiotic decisions for the plot to progress and have little romantic chemistry together that results in a lack of emotional resonance for the viewers, saying that "Letters to Juliet loses on all counts. It's not a comedy. It's barely romantic, and even the scenery looks filtered through a couple dozen attempts at post-production color timing (no nation is this…golden)."[9] Nick Schager of Slant Magazine was negative towards its "cornball fairy-tale romanticism", criticizing the performances of Seyfried and Egan for having "a prototypically bland rom-com heroine" and being "laughably phony" in the material both given respectively, and found the plot to be of "dime store novel-quality."[10] Kyle Smith of the New York Post also saw the generic plot "as straight and obvious as raw spaghetti", and gave half-hearted praise to the line delivery of Seyfried and Egan, saying they "may be the perfect actors to carry out this assignment: Neither is embarrassable."[11]

Box office

Letters to Juliet opened at #3 to $13,540,486 behind Iron Man 2's second weekend and Robin Hood.[12] In its second weekend, the film dropped 33.5% with $9,006,266 into #4.[13] The film eventually grossed $53,032,453 domestically and $79,181,750 worldwide.[2]

Soundtrack

References

  1. ↑ Fritz, Ben (May 16, 2010). "First Look: 'Robin Hood' wobbly in U.S. but hits target overseas". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 16, 2010.
  2. 1 2 "Letters to Juliet (2010)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Roger Ebert. "Letters to Juliet Review". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved May 22, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Letters to Juliet (2010)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 21, 2016.
  5. ↑ "Letters to Juliet reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved October 21, 2016.
  6. ↑ Bradshaw, Peter (June 10, 2010). "Film review: Letters to Juliet". The Guardian. London: Guardian Media Group. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
  7. ↑ Biancolli, Amy (May 14, 2010). "Review: 'Letters to Juliet'". San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
  8. ↑ Weitzman, Elizabeth (May 14, 2010). "Letters to Juliet". New York Daily News. Mortimer Zuckerman. Archived from the original on July 23, 2010. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  9. ↑ Gibron, Bill (May 14, 2010). "You Can't Blame Romeo for Abandoning this 'Juliet'". PopMatters. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
  10. ↑ Schager, Nick (May 13, 2010). "Letters to Juliet". Slant Magazine. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  11. ↑ Smith, Kyle (May 14, 2010). "In 'Letters to Juliet' all roads lead to Romeo". New York Post. News Corp. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  12. ↑ Weekend Box Office Results for May 14-16, 2010 - Box Office Mojo
  13. ↑ Weekend Box Office Results for May 21-23, 2010 - Box Office Mojo
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