Letters to Juliet - Movie
Today I went with Brooke to see Letters to Juliet & thoroughly enjoyed it. Amanda Seyfried plays Sophie Hall, a fact checker for The New Yorker who has always wanted to be a writer. Her and fiance Victor (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) go on a "pre-honeymoon" vacation in Italy. While Sophie is looking forward to exploring Verona, she's dismayed to find out that Victors plans are to attend wine auctions, and discover new wines & cheeses for the Italian restaurant he plans to open soon.
They decide upon a "win-win" scenario, where he continues his quest for new flavors, and she will explore Verona alone. She discovers "Casa di Giulietta" where Juliet Capulet is said to have lived. Inside the courtyard where the famous balcony is, she discovers a wall where women have left letters for years. As the evening draws to a close, she sees a woman removing the letters from the wall, and placing them in a basket. Curious, she follows the woman to a small restaurant where a group of women declare themselves to be Juliet's secretaries.
The next day, as she's helping collect letters from the wall, she accidentally dislodges a stone. She discovers a letter from an Englishwoman named Claire, written 50 years ago. Deciding that love has no expiration date, she decides to respond. Within a matter of days, her grandson Charlie arrives to inform her that she made a terrible decision, and his grandmother has come to Italy to relocate her long lost Lorenzo.
Upon discovering that there are 74 Lorenzo Bartolinis in the area, Claire enlists Sophie's skills as a fact checker, much to Charlies dismay. They work their way through a variety of wrong Lorenzo's, from the Speedo wearing Lothario, to the man who curses everything about his first love....including her mustache. Yes I said her mustache.
The movie may seem fairly predictable to those of us who have enjoyed many chick flicks, but the Italian scenery was well worth the price of admission. The actors all did terrific, and for ladies who love sexy accents Chris Egan & Gael Garcia Bernal don't disappoint. Vanessa Redgrave, still lovely at 73, gave a stunning performance as Claire, and Chris Egan played the handsome, sarcastic & secretly charming Charlie brilliantly.
