Film Review - The Last Letter From Your Lover (2021)

Tissues at the ready! The very sight of Jojo Moyes’ name on the credits for The Last Letter From Your Lover immediately whets your appetite for a grand, sweeping romance, the type of pure escapism which doesn’t go amiss at the moment. Me Before You, the first of her novels to be adapted for the big screen, was an unexpected hit in 2016, with its appealing combination of Emilia Clarke’s loveable carer and Sam Claflin’s smooth businessman confined to a wheelchair. It was an unashamed tearjerker but, while The Last Letter From Your Lover aspires to follow in its footsteps, it struggles to keep up at just about every turn.

With a story of forbidden love from the past at its centre and a burgeoning new romance in the present as our introduction, the initial interest once again comes from its two leads. In the present day, there’s journalist Ellie (Felicity Jones), discovering a cache of secret love letters and unable to resist a bit of detective work. Their fascination is made all the stronger by a growing attraction between her and a colleague. The letters date back to the 60s, when Jennifer (Shailene Woodley), the glamorous but unhappy wife of cold hearted financier Laurence (Joe Alwyn) falls in love with journalist Anthony (Callum Turner) but, ultimately has to decide where her future lies. We won’t say much more because chances are you can see where this is all leading ….

Not that predictability is usually a problem in glamorous love stories: the reassuring knowledge that romance never really changes is integral to the genre. But for it to work, the lovers need to be believable and, even more importantly, have that essential chemistry and spark on screen. And that’s where The Last Letter From Your Lover falls down. Woodley and Jones make more than watchable leads – Jones, in particular, escaping the corsets of her more familiar costume drama roles – but when teamed with their respective lovers, all we get is the occasional splutter, instead of that essential frisson. There’s one exception, when the Jennifer/Anthony story is brought right up to date and there’s a flurry of genuine emotion, but most of that comes from the unavoidable pathos that goes with the older Anthony being played by Ben Cross in his penultimate screen role. And it comes too late.

Fans of classic romantic dramas will relish spotting the references – Daphne Du Maurier and Hitchcock in particular – but the affluently elegant backdrop to a marriage of convenience where the husband regards his wife as nothing more than another piece of property isn’t enough to engage us in the romance from the past. It simply doesn’t capture our hearts: indeed, we soon start to question what the lovers see in each other. The contemporary story is a slight improvement, although that’s largely down to Jones’ performance, while the talents of Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa are squandered in what is little more than a magnified cameo. Despite the commitment of the two leads – both were also executive producers – their efforts come to little more than naught. Those tissues will stay, sadly, bone dry.