Love Letter

I haven't had much experience with Japanese movies beside "The Ring" which left me utterly confused and frustrated with the ending. However, “Love Letter” is not a horror movie and I watched it because I heard so much about it.

“Love Letter” was written and directed by first time writer/director Shunji Iwai and surprisingly, became the winner of the Toronto Film Festival Audience Award in 1995. I am not really familiar with Japanese stars so I can’t really tell whether these actors are famous or not. The stars of the movie are Miho Nakayama, Etsushi Toyokawa, and Miki Sakai.

The title “Love Letter” indicates the letter that Hiroko wrote to her fiancé, Itsuki, who died in a mountain climbing accident. Hiroko mourned for his death and as a way of relieving her grief, she sent a love letter to Itsuki’s old address, the address that she believed was non-existent since a freeway had been built through the house, never expecting a reply. As fate would have it, the letter reached another Itsuki, a woman with the same name, who replied as she thought Hiroko was her friend. It turned out that the female Itsuki had the same name as Hiroko’s fiancé and they were in the same class in high school. Both Itsuki suffered endless teasing from classmates because of their names. A correspondence between Hiroko and Itsuki unveiled the past and changed both their lives.

There is a peculiar way of acting in Japanese movie that I am not used to. For instance, Itsuki’s grandfather, I kept thinking that he was a very strange comic factor in the movie until the very end when I realized that it was his way of acting, he did not mean to be funny or weird. There was Hiroko’s friend who later became her boyfriend, he always smiled and was so dramatic in his acting that when he pulled her into his arms for a kiss, I nearly fell of the chair laughing. Then there were people getting drunk at the funeral. However, the main actress delivered an emotional performance as the heartbroken Hiroko who painfully realized that her fiancé had never really hold any affection for her, that she was just a shadow of his true love. She was also successful in her portrayal of the happy female Itsuki who traced back the path of the past and unknowingly at the same time, relived her memory and emotions. The two stars in the roles of young male and female Itsuki also turned in fine performance.

The cold, damp and lonely winter is the setting for this movie that is quite a contrast to the sweet, unspoken love the male Itsuki has for his classmate. The magnificent camerawork and the strong cast are bonuses to this movie. The plot is rather interesting and original however the movie took forever to get to the main point. Yet second half of the movie is worth the sitting through the boring and dragging first half. The ending really added the final emotional touch to the movie. Few unusual twists in the film make the cliché theme about first love attractive. Overall, it is not an outstanding movie that will provoke some powerful emotions in viewers. Rather, it gently takes the viewer on a path of sweet memory of first love and with its ending, leaves a deep impression in the viewer’ heart.