Film review: The Last Letter to your Lover

 This overly saccharine adaptation of Jojo Moyes’s 2008 best selling novel of the same name tells two interwoven love stories, one set in the present and another set in the past. Directed by Texas based director Augustine Frizzell, The Last Letter From Your Lover is co-written by Nick Payne (The Sense of an Ending) and Esta Spalding (Masters of Sex) and stars Shailene Woodley, Felicity Jones and Callum Turner.

In the present day, journalist Ellie Haworth (Felicity Jones) is a hard working, hard partying young woman who has very little interest in romance or relationships. While researching an obituary for a recently deceased former editor at her paper, Ellie uncovers a series of letters from the 1960s between two lovers known only as J (Woodley) and Boots (Turner).

Aided by handsome, but uptight archivist Rory (Nabhaan Rizwan), Ellie uncovers more and more of the letters between the star-crossed lovers and decides to investigate, and perhaps help reunite J and Boots years later.

It’s a predictable cheese-fest of a movie — think Mills and Boon, but without the passion. Frizzell adapts Moyes’s book with great attention to detail, but there isn’t much in the story that hasn’t been done before. There are frequent nods to films such as Brief Encounter or even The French Lieutenant’s Woman, but overall nothing here screams exceptional.

I found it hard to care about either love story — a fatal flaw in a romance. Granted, there are some decent performances throughout from Jones and Woodley who are both brilliant at what they do, but on the whole, this adaptation feels a little too old-fashioned both tonally and thematically.

Having said that, the numerous fans of Moyes’s novels will find a lot here to enjoy, but other viewers shouldn’t expect anything out of the ordinary.