Letters To Juliet

3:09 PM | Labels: movie

Starring: Amanda Seyfried as Sophie Hall; Chris Egan as Charlie; Vanessa Redgrave as Claire; Gael García Bernal as Victor; Franco Nero as Lorenzo Bartolini

Release date(s): May 14, 2010

Running time: 105 minutes

The Movie Spoiler & Review

Letters To Juliet is another one of those films that come out for the ladies to go to instead of Robin Hood. The film is all about emotion and sentiment, also a bit cheesy and predictable, it’s not really my kind of movie.

Sophie Hall is a fact checker at The New Yorker magazine who dreams of becoming a writer, is engaged to a chef named Victor, is about to open an Italian restaurant in downtown New York, a man who is marked from the beginning as the wrong guy. To celebrate, the two jet off to Verona as a pre-honeymoon, where Victor spends his time seeking out new Italian food suppliers, busy with cheese, wine and olive oil tastings.

Instead of joining him, Sophie goes sightseeing and stumbles onto a bizarre real-life tradition in Verona, home of Shakespeare's Capulets and Montagues. Young women write letters to Juliet, post them on Juliet’s wall and seeking for an advice. For decades, a fleet of Juliet's "secretaries" have been answering these letters. The next day, Sophie helps Isabel, one of the secretaries, take the letters. She eventually finding a-50-year-old letter written by Claire, who was a teenager and heartbroken over a fabulous young Italian named Lorenzo Barbalini.

Anyway, who on earth would ask Shakespeare's Juliet for romantic advice? She's a girl who killed herself at the age of 13 over a boy she'd known for a matter of weeks-- her story is a cautionary tale of all the ways that love can go wrong.

Sophie responds, as Juliet's secretary, urging her to follow her heart — if it is still ticking — and within days, Claire shows up in Verona with her grandson Charlie. Sophie and Claire decided to take on a driving tour looking for Lorenzo, near Siena, Italy, a place that Claire says Lorenzo always enjoyed.

(Mulai paragraf ini, gw copy dari Wikipedia, karna males mikir Inggrisnya) Traveling, Sophie and the grandmother and grandson learn about each others’ lives like that Charlie has an ex-girlfriend he hasn't seen in a year, named Patricia, with Claire learning that Sophie's mother abandoned her when she was nine and Sophie learning that Charlie's parents died in a car crash when he was ten. The three meet many men named Lorenzo Bartolini, and also visit the grave of one who has died.

The next day, while driving back, Claire asks that they stop at a vineyard when she notices it is the vineyard that makes their favorite wine. There, she sees a young Italian man who looks exactly like Lorenzo. Charlie urges his grandmother to see if it's the right Lorenzo, but Claire decides she doesn’t want to. Just then, the elder Lorenzo arrives and is indeed Claire's long-lost love. The two reunite in a heartfelt embrace.

Lorenzo introduces the three to his family. Later, Sophie leaves to go back to Verona and Victor. Claire tells Charlie "not to wait fifty years" as he discovers there is only one girl he loves, Sophie. Charlie races after her but, seeing her embrace Victor, he leaves.

Back in New York, Sophie gets an invitation to Claire and Lorenzo's wedding that Saturday. She breaks up with Victor at the kitchen of his Italian restaurant, as their relationship is going nowhere. Sophie flies to Italy alone, hoping to meet Charlie there. However on arrival he is with Patricia, who Sophie presumes is his ex and after Claire reads out the letter Sophie originally wrote to her she runs away. Charlie chases and finds her on a balcony. Charlie reveals that there are in fact two Patricias and this one is his cousin and that he is in love with Sophie also. He climbs up the balcony to kiss Sophie (as Romeo was supposed to have done) but falls. She rushes down to see if he's all right and kisses him as Claire and Lorenzo look on happily followed by the other guests.

Below is Sophie’s letter to Claire

"'What' and 'if' two words as nonthreatening as words come. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: ‘What if?'..."

"I don't know how your story ended. But I know that what you felt then was love - true love – then it's never too late. If it was true, then why wouldn't it be true now? You only need the courage to follow your heart"

"I don't know what a love like that feels like. A love to leave loved ones for, a love to cross oceans for. But I'd like to believe if I ever felt it. I'd have the courage to seize it. I hope you have the courage to seize it, Claire. And if you didn't, I hope one day that you will."