The Last Letter From Your Lover (12A)

In present day London, commitment-phobic journalist Ellie Haworth stumbles upon a misplaced love letter in the archives of her newspaper. She becomes fixated on the secret affair detailed in the missive and enlists the help of archivist Rory to piece together forbidden desire from a bygone era. Through this detective work, Ellie unravels fortunes of Jennifer Stirling and her powerful husband Laurence in 1960s London.

LondonNet Film Review
The Last letter from Your Lover (12A)

Raging fire, protruding tongue, smiling face with horns – the inelegant art of seduction in the 21st-century has been reduced to rows of suggestive emojis on smudged touchscreens. It’s a far cry from the quickening pulses of a not-so-bygone era when couples courted on ink-stained paper and disgorged feelings in beautifully composed love letters that spoke directly from the heart, not the groin. Jojo Moyes’ bestselling novel The Last Letter From Your Lover tantalised readers with a forbidden affair, chronicled in a series of handwritten missives simply signed “B”. Screenwriters Nick Payne and Esta Spalding retain the source text’s timeframes, skipping back and forth between stolen glances in rose-tinted swinging mid-1960s London and walks of shame more than 50 years later in the cold, pristine capital. Director Augustine Frizzell captures contrasting moods and textures of the two periods…

The past is softly lit and impeccably dressed in pillbox hats and matching gloves and scarves, while the present has a soulless, rain-sodden, metallic quality that reflects our reliance on technology to facilitate interactions. Strangely, it’s the 21st-century framing device starring Felicity Jones and Nabhaan Rizwan which is far more involving than swooning flashbacks to Callum Turner’s pursuit of Shailene Woodley. Their screen chemistry is at best lukewarm and I felt no emotional tug as the scriptwriters contrived a sappy resolution involving older incarnations of the doomed lovers, played by Ben Cross and Diana Kent.

In present day London, commitment-phobic journalist Ellie Haworth (Jones) stumbles upon a misplaced love letter in the archives of her newspaper, The London Chronicle. She becomes fixated on a secret affair detailed in the correspondence and enlists the help of archivist Rory (Rizwan) to piece together the forbidden desire. “I have to know how it ends,” Ellie implores Rory. Through their dogged and haphazard detective work, Ellie unravels the fate of society wife Jennifer Stirling (Woodley) and her powerful industrialist husband Laurence (Joe Alwyn) in 1965 London.

A chance encounter with debonair foreign correspondent Anthony O’Hare (Turner), who is writing a profile on Laurence, turns Jennifer’s world upside down. She surfs a crashing wave of emotion and contemplates leaving Laurence and the financial security of her marriage for unbridled passion with a new man. However, fate has other ideas and it’s left to Ellie and sidekick Rory to repair the damage.

The Last Letter From Your Lover cribs a few footnotes from The Notebook but lacks that film’s swooning, giddy outpourings across the class divide. Jones and Rizwan’s appealing and lightly comical double act polishes the rougher edges of the plot’s many contrivances. Frizzell’s film is lavishly tailored and accessorised but beneath all the luxurious fabrics is a heart only half full of missed opportunities and regrets.

– Sarah Lee