Review of The Love Letter (1998) by Jon C — 08 Aug 2016

Charming and unusual romantic fantasy.

SF writer Jack Finney has been largely, and unjustly, forgotten by the general reading public. His name is well known to film trivia buffs as the author of the novel on which the 1956 Don Siegal cult film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and several remakes) was based, and fans of Science Fiction/Fantasy will know that he also was one of the few authors in the genre who achieved commercial success publishing in mainstream magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. His classic time travel novel Time and Again, and its sequel, From Time to Time, are still well worth reading.

Finney's work is basically fantasy with science overtones, often as a framework for conventional but well done boy-meets-girl romance stories; they are sometimes sentimental, but the sentiment is so innocently conveyed that it is charming rather than cloying. This description also applies to The Love Letter, a TV-film version of one of Finney's classic short stories. The premise is simple: a young man in late 20th century Boston buys an antique desk originally owned by a young woman in a nearby town in the mid-19th century, and finds a letter she has written to an imaginary lover in a secret compartment. He finds a way to answer the letter, and in the ensuing correspondence, the two fall in love. Despite the obviously impossibility of such a relationship, the film manages to achieve a sort of happy ending.

Though this film is technically science fantasy, the time travel aspect is achieved almost totally through the juxtaposition of realistic scenes from the two eras, with virtually no special effects. Though a made-for-TV movie, production values are very high, and the acting generally excellent, especially by Jennifer Jason Leigh as the Civil War era belle. As basically a romance film, it may qualify as what is sometimes disparagingly called a "chick flick," but the film's excellence and charm will appeal, I think, even to people who ordinarily don't like that genre.

No advisories, except for some brief graphically grim scenes of wounded soldiers after Gettysburg. The Hallmark DVD transfer is very good.