Netflix’s new romantic drama, The Last Letter from Your Lover, is about two love stories entrenched together, while the story desperately tries to stay in the 1960s forever. The bulk of the movie is a culmination of flashbacks, connecting and reconnecting with lovers in a different time period. The Last Letter from Your Lover is an adaptation of Jojo Moyes’ novel of the same name, set in two time periods that involve epistolary romances. With intersecting love stories of two women and emotions that don’t quite hit the right spots, the movie attempts to keep a lackluster romance on the right track.
In 1965 London, socialite Jennifer Stirling (Shailene Woodley) returns home from the hospital suffering from amnesia after a car accident. She struggles to remember her life married to Lawrence (Joe Alwyn) and wonders whether any of it is real or not. When Jennifer discovers a letter inside a book addressed to her, written by a man named “Boot,” she revisits the past to remember her life before the accident. Meanwhile, in the present time, Ellie Haworth (Felicity Jones), a journalist who works for The London Chronicle, discovers a letter addressed to Jennifer. With the help of shy archivist Rory (Nabhaan Rizwan), she embarks on a journey to find the rest of the letters and the identity of the lovers in an illicit affair.
The Last Letter from Your Lover is an interesting attempt to intersect the love stories of Jennifer and Ellie, but the structure gets messy. Ellie’s budding love story with Rory is left on the side while Jennifer is given most of the spotlight to tell her story. One of the movie’s many flaws is that the story switches from Jennifer to Ellie, often cutting from deep and vulnerable moments between Jennifer and Anthony to funny and awkward moments between Ellie and Rory. The problem lies with its non-linear storytelling, and the film focuses on too much time going back and forth from the present to 1965, sometimes lingering too long in the ‘60s. For a movie that aims to focus on two relationships, The Last Letter from Your Lover does its best to balance them out. However, parallel storytelling does not work when Jennifer and Lawrence’s emotionally distant relationship sets the tone of the story and the film forgets Ellie and Rory’s budding romance.
Jennifer is trapped in an unhappy marriage, and Anthony O’Hare (Callum Turner), also known as “Boot,” gives her the chance to leave it all behind and move to New York with him. But Jennifer is struggling to follow her heart and forgo the easier way of life, which is to be married to a rich and wealthy man who can provide her with everything that she needs.
As for Ellie’s arc, it seems as though her story is left to be written on its own. The majority of the story is focused on Jennifer’s amnesia, her letters shared with Anthony, their romance slowly charting into dangerous territory, and Lawrence’s lack of emotion towards her. Even though Ellie is the curious journalist that tells the story, her romance with Rory is set aside to give Jennifer, Lawrence, and Anthony’s story more importance. The Last Letter from Your Lover is a movie that believes in choosing someone that makes you happy, and Ellie is the complete opposite of what the movie represents. She is not the kind of character that believes in love; rather, she chases a story that could potentially be something great to tell her audience.
The Last Letter from Your Lover is not the epitome of romance, as the cast lacked chemistry and the messages lacked meaning. Even though the movie started off in the right place, its messy existence relies on a romance that does not hold any emotional grip but attempts to drive old and modern storylines together. It’s a conventional romantic love affair with steamy kisses and confessions leading to heartbreak, but it doesn’t tangle with our hearts, as the movie fails to find a balance between Jennifer and Ellie’s intersecting love stories. Woodley and Turner’s lack of chemistry is another miss. Both of the actors deliver the dialogue with blandness and lack of expression. It is difficult to convince the audience that these characters are truly in love with each other. The Last Letter from Your Lover reminds the audience that there are better romantic movies than this one.
