The Last Letter From Your Lover Review: Return to Sender

Netflix’s latest romance, The Last Letter From Your Lover, based on Jojo Moyes’s novel of the same name, tells the grand tale of long-lost love, but manages to be intensely average.

It’s basically a bland retooling of the 2010 film, Letters to Juliet, which was bland itself to begin with. It is a plot we’ve seen before with character personalities that have been in dozens of romance movies and rom-coms.

And there are strong elements of An Affair to Remember, but Rita Wilson won’t be playing a character that gushes over the love story like she did as Tom Hanks’s sister in Sleepless in Seattle. In fact, no one will be recounting any of the romantic scenes because they are unremarkable and generic.

Two major factors contribute to the profound mediocrity of this film. The first being the lack of chemistry between Shailene Woodley and Callum Turner. They play Jennifer Stirling and Anthony “Boot” O’Hare, the couple at the center of this epic love story, and it’s pretty important that the two portray an intense bond between them.

It is disappointingly lack-luster, and this dullness hangs like a cloud above the whole film and across its decade-spanning timeline. At times, some scenes shine through, mainly from the modern day part of the movie which features Felicity Jones and Nabhaan Rizwan, who have much more chemistry than the actors in the driving part of the narrative.

The way these two storylines are paralleled really hurts the main one. Jenny and Boot are supposed to be the grander romance of the two, but Ellie and Rory are who we’d rather pay attention to. Theirs is a sweet, charming love affair as opposed to the dry, stiffness of the period portion of the film.

And that stiffness goes beyond just Jenny and Anthony. Her husband, Larry (Joe Alwyn), comes across like a formulaic foe. The best way I can think to describe this performance is to liken it to the most annoying suspect on a Murder She Wrote episode.  He has a too young air about him which makes his stern behavior a tad ridiculous. 

This leads me to the second aspect that doesn’t work for the film: the casting of Woodley. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but she does not fit well into period pieces—I just don’t buy it. Jones could’ve done the role of Jennifer, and does an admirable job with Ellie, but I can’t say the same for Woodley.

Like Alwyn, she seems too young for this storyline. When the two are in scenes together it’s as if they are kids playing dress up. And Woodley plays none of the passage of time in her performance, which makes this unfortunate casting even more glaring in her later years.

Unfortunately, this carries over to the actor playing the older Jennifer (Diana Kent). Maybe Kent and Ben Cross, who plays the older Anthony, have great chemistry, but it doesn’t translate over the story’s passage of time because of the shoddy groundwork laid by Woodley and Turner.

A rom-com that focuses on Ellie and Rory with the period drama as an added throughline would’ve been far more interesting.

Postscripts:

• Full disclosure, I wanted to see this mainly for Ncuti Gatwa, but to my dismay, he’s only in it for about five minutes total.
• The mention of Gordonstoun makes me think of The Crown.
• The old archives room is the most romantic setting of the film, and that includes the dreamt-of places from Jenny and Boot’s picnic game.
• Having Jenny and Ellie both wear houndstooth at points that correspond with their timelines is a nice detail. 
• The real tragedy here is Felipe. 
• You know Rory is a good one when you see how sweet he is with his cat, Diesel. 
• Maybe if Jenny gave herself more time she wouldn’t always be late to these meetings. Honestly, it’s rude.

What did you think of The Last Letter From Your Lover? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Last Letter From Your Lover is currently streaming on Netflix.

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