There is perhaps an unspoken rule in making a romantic comedy, insofar as the premise involves an American heading for continental Europe to discover himself/herself, that overwhelmingly the region of Europe that is being visited is more often than not either Meditteranean, Catholic or both. Films of the past few years such as A Good Year and Under the Tuscan Sun and PBS travelogue series Spain... On the Road Again (co-hosted by no less than Gwyneth Paltrow), all in respectively, Provence, Tuscany, and all over Spain, seem to prove this trend.
Generally such romantic comedies tend to involve an overwhelmingly WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) protagonist discovering the more expressive, less reserved culture of his/her Latin cousins, with which s/he finds true love and liberation of the spirit. Magical holidays rarely take place in Protestant regions such as North Holland, Bavaria or Greater Oslo. Perhaps this allure stems from the centrality of the Protestant Ethic to American society, and a subconscious awareness of the prosperity it has wrought at the expense of culture, health and work-life balance with respect to some other members of the industrialised West. Conservative American economists and pundits love to slam these members of Old Europe for organising too many labour demonstrations despite a 20 % unemployment rate, but more than a few of them would immediately jet off for wood-fired oven pizza in Naples as opposed to its doughy substitute at Domino's.
Letters to Juliet is another solid, dependable entry in this sub-genre. Amanda Seyfried, blonde and blue-eyed as they come, is our WASP American naif. She plays Sophie, a magazine writer whose fiance is Victor (played by Gael Garcia Bernal), a would-be restaurateur who is often too busy with little time to entertain her thoughts. When Victor goes to Verona, Italy to search for supplies to start his new chain of restaurants, Sophie comes across a site called the "House of Juliet", named in honour of Shakespeare's fictitious heroine, in which there is a wall where letters pertaining to relationship problems are left by lovelorn women from all over the world to Shakespeare's heroine for advice. She discovers that these letters are taken at the end of the day by an organisation called the "Secretaries of Juliet", who write replies to them, and takes up a job as one herself. Before long she discovers a five decade old letter in the wall, and writes back. The letter was left by Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), who arrives with her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan) to find her lover that she left behind all those years ago. Charlie is a sensible English boy with an abrasive wit that borders on the insufferable. His pinched features may make him look perpetually constipated, but being blond and blue-eyed as Sophie is, you know that their passions will be revealed in the clear light of the Italian sun, like the rosy tint their pasty skins acquire over the course of the film.
A relatively wholesome romantic comedy that might almost make good family viewing minus a swear word or two, Letters to Juliet is a pretty confection despite its near total predictability. There are the usual jokes of the love-hate relationship between Old Europeans, Britons and Americans, the usual lovely scenery, the usual idyllic evocations of Italian life, the usual travelogue-like excursions into Italian cuisine. This reviewer's sole grievance with an otherwise well-made, lightweight but entertaining romp is perhaps with the character of Victor, who seems to be a nice spin in not being a typical Latin Lover despite being played by Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal whose Spanish accent is as thick as a burrito and who possesses classically handsome looks. There is a crucial moment at a wine auction at which something happens that should have been the setup for a far better, and far funnier ending, than what we have at present. But such an ending might have been against the Protestant Ethic of its intended audience. I leave you to figure out what ending that might have been.
PS (spoiler alert) – Claire's long lost lover when he finally appears, is a prosperous vineyard owner played by Franco Nero, whose piercing blue eyes graced many a spaghetti Western, and who is Redgrave's long time partner in life. At his age of nearly 70 Nero looks no less capable on a horse than in the days when he wielded a Gatling gun and sent countless bad guys to their doom. Tarantino, you know what to do.
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