There’s romance in those lovely rolling hills of Tuscany, and it’s there that Letters to Juliet takes us. From the long opening credits, which feature images of loving couples from the renaissance to the present, we know we are in for a loving time.
Sophie is an aspiring wide eyed-writer, played by Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia!), who is off on for a pre-wedding holiday to Verona with exuberant fiancé, Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal, Motorcycle Diaries) — who is about to open a restaurant in New York.
While Victor is off on business, Sophie stumbles across the “secretaries of Juliet”, a funny gaggle of Italian women who respond to the letters left in a wall below what was reputedly Juliet’s balcony.
It is a genuine tourist spot, where those posing with the statue of Juliet have left the statue with an ever-shining right breast from rubbing it for good luck in love. But the courtyard full of wailing women may be just another of the story’s myths, although the secretaries reportedly exist.
The secretaries just happen to need an English translator, and, hello, Sophie takes a holiday job. It leads to her somehow stumbling across a loose rock and finding a 50-year-old letter from Claire Smith (Vanessa Redgrave) who had to leave the love of her young life to return to England.
Within a day of responding and with magical speed, Claire appears, determined to track down her long-lost love. She is being escorted by her pouting, whinging nephew, Charlie (Australian Christopher Egan of Home and Away) and off the trio go across the gorgeous Tuscany countryside looking for Lorenzo together. And both Sophie and director Gary Winick are hoping they will have a romantic story they can sell.
The journey becomes a road trip ritual of meeting the various Lorenzos, which provides many comic moments, but they are gentle moments. And if the destination is long-lost romance, then love will be found on the way.
Seyfried plays Sophie with a bright spark and does her best to make the plot holes believable. Bernal is so likeable as Victor, it’s hard to believe Sophie would be tempted by a prat such as Charlie.
Egan plays upright British Charlie the way an Australian still smarting over the Ashes would, and seems to hold the same grimace for an hour. Once allowed to break it, he shows some dimension, but by then, his credibility has been lost.
It is hard not to be seduced by the beauty of the countryside and the grace of Redgrave who sweeps the screen and grabs her moments. And those scenes with real-life husband Franco Nero have honest warmth.
This is a comedy so gentle it is almost devoid of laughs, and is as predictable as the many sunsets it captures. Only the determined performances of Redgrave, Seyfried and Tuscany’s scenery save this from sinking into terminal sentimentality, and leave you with a genial glow.
Letters to Juliet is in cinemas now.
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