Letters to Juliet

You know how it is when you go off to Italy with your boyfriend and he ignores you and so you go to the house of a fictional character where lovesick ladies leave heartbroken letters stuck to a wall and then you find one that's been there for 50 years and then you meet the widowed lady who wrote it and go off on a a road trip through one picturesque Italian village after another until you find the now-70-year-old guy she's been pining for her whole life? And the widow's seemingly snooty but secretly warm-hearted and deep-thoughts-having grandson comes along and you fall in love with him?

“Letters to Juliet” is about Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), an American girl who visits Verona with the man she’s engaged to marry (Gael Garcia Bernal). He’s always leaving her behind to investigate wine and truffles for his New York restaurant. She visits the house allegedly inhabited by Shakespeare’s Juliet. Below the balcony there, lovelorn women for years have posted “letters to Juliet,” asking for advice.

Sophie finds a letter 50 years old, written by a young British girl about a Tuscan boy she met, fell in love with and allowed to fall out of her life. Sophie writes to the girl, the letter amazingly finds its way, and soon Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) and her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan) arrive in Verona. So now, if you are an experienced moviegoer, you definnitely will know what must happen by the end of the story.

All of this is wrapped up in unimaginably beautiful shots of the Italian countryside, the warmth of the friendship between Sophie and Claire, and visits to many of the men named Lorenzo Bartolini, which was the name of the boy Claire loved so long ago. “Letters to Juliet” requires the three of them to visit the candidates in person, leading to a series of false leads and at last, of course, to the real Lorenzo Bartolini (Franco Nero).

To me, the story seems like a fairy tale, but it's really romantic somehow. As the movies goes, I can feel sweet elements in the whole film, and it's indeed a lovely story.