Movie Review : Love Letter (1995, Japanese)
Love Letter (1995, Japanese)
"A contemporary Japanese love story, about two women who loved the same man, who write letters to each other about him and discover in the process that the past isn't what they thought it was." - Reviewed by Shelly Kraicer at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival
The story opens on a snowy mountain followed by a funeral which Hiroko Watanabe attends. Her fiancé was killed in a climbing accident. On the way back, she visits his mother and comes across a yearbook of his school days. She finds an address there for her dead lover – Itsuki Fujii. The address is not supposed to exist any longer as a highway should be running through that place. She sends a letter addressed to him…and surprisingly gets a response back. This correspondence keeps on until she decides to go and meet the person writing to her and yet misses her by a whisker.
The person replying to the letters is a class-mate of her dead lover by the same name. Their correspondence grows and they write to each other about the memories of the common person trying to discover more about him. In the process, the classmate learns that even though she was never in love with her namesake, she really did feel about him. In the end she finds out that the shy boy classmate was actually in love with her. Hiroko realizes that though she loved Itsuki very much and he loved her back, it was not love at first sight. He had fallen in love with Hiroko because her face resembled his namesake classmate’s. It is a touching romantic story that had me in tears at three different places. A must watch for all.
Points = 4.5* / 5 due to the slow beginning.
Labels: Movie Review
about this entry
you’re currently reading “
- published:
- 7:52 PM
- by T
0 comments (Post a Comment)