The Last Letter from Your Lover
NetflixDistant pangs of dead love are the foundation of Ellie Haworth (Felicity Jones). With no love of her own, she backdates her dedicated dissection of durable affection to the 1960s, stumbling across a love affair that her career would surely benefit from publishing. Where director Augustine Frizzell has the opportunity to strike an incendiary sophomore feature, The Last Letter from Your Lover is the shameful Netflix fodder audiences have come to know and expect. Frizzell has the opportunity to spin a delicate bit of craft, one that showcases the dismay of Jones’ journalist. Does she sacrifice the legends of these star-crossed lovers for a bite at the big leagues? It is the insurmountable, inevitable question that will often be asked of protagonists with nothing else to do.
These characters are not the brightest sparks, but the disdain director Frizzell must feel for their audience is rather telling. Four lines of dialogue – one of which is a despondent “Hmm, jeez” – are all we get for the grand revelation for the big breakthrough Haworth is given. Could they not muster more emotion for a story that clocks in at closer to two hours than it does to one? Surely, the latter timekeeping would be preferable, any more time with Jones, Callum Turner and the rest of these blank slate performances and permanent damage would be done. You can tell these cast members are clutching at straws as they make postmodernist pops at social media and the simplicity of ending an affair. Apparently, it is rather simple.
What certainly is very simple is The Last Letter from Your Lover. There is a terribly dull tone underlining the whole experience, one that cannot fade away since it is core to the characters and their actions. A journalist here has an obsession with letters, and it is unconvincing to think that it is anything more than self-interest running the show. Sleek and blurred camera choices mark out indefinable backgrounds for Frizzell’s piece. Crying characters, rough encounters and a need to have a relationship like the letters she depends upon for either comfort or cash, The Last Letter from Your Lover is overwhelmed by its simplicity. As it stutters towards its end, there is no remarkable moment where we can define or distinguish a truly rewarding connection.
The Last Letter from Your Lover tries to tug at the heartstrings but is far too annoying to pull it off with any sort of tact. Whilst many films on an equal level of misery to this one can drag out at least an honest conversation, the work here from Frizzell and her cast is instantly forgettable and not at all that unique. Where it does not lack clarity and at least has a decent core to it, the film struggles to connect with its cast. Instead, they reflect on their relationships, holding over their heads a series of letters that, apparently, make their life and the love they found all worthless. It contextualises it, and we are damned if the context of The Last Letter from Your Lover is ever made clear, it’s bad enough in the current state of confusion.