★★☆☆☆
Two couples, one in the Sixties, the other in the present day, are linked by iffy writing and gloopy sentiment in this romantic drama. London, 1965: Jennifer (Shailene Woodley) is locked in a loveless marriage to the rich but sinister Lawrence (Joe Alwyn). Emerging from hospital after an accident, she has lost some of her memory. Flashes of it return, reminding her that she was in love with Anthony (Callum Turner), a foreign correspondent she met on the French Riviera.
London, the present: Ellie (Felicity Jones) is a journalist who finds a trove of letters in her newspaper’s archive sent by Anthony to Jennifer 50 years earlier. Ellie’s love life is a disaster, but Rory (Nabhaan Rizwan), the geeky bloke in charge of the archive, seems quite nice . . .
Adapted from the novel by Jojo Moyes, Augustine Frizzell’s film has its moments, most involving Jones or Turner. Yet it never really nails either of its time frames. The Sixties are full of clichéd retro ennui — sighing silences, cocktails on the terrace — while the contemporary scenes are brisker and even more annoying. They probably could have got more mileage from the contrast between emoji text speak and the lost age of letter writing.
Films featuring journalists are often lambs to the slaughter when it comes to critics and this one is no different. Anthony is meant to be a hot-shot writer, but you wouldn’t know it from his love letters to Jennifer. “Know that you hold my hopes and my heart in your hands,” he gushes. Meanwhile, Ellie’s paper, The London Chronicle, is a supposedly established organ, but is based in what looks like a one-room internet startup in Shoreditch, and there’s a shamefully brief cameo from the wonderful Ncuti Gatwa of Sex Education as one of her colleagues.
None of the main cast is a bad actor, but at least two are miscast and all are lumbered with some awful lines. While I have lots of time for Woodley (the Divergent series), I just don’t buy her as the kind of woman who would speed along the Riviera in a convertible while wearing a Jackie O headscarf.
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Alwyn (The Favourite) is wasted as the one-dimensionally nasty Lawrence, who tells Jennifer when she’s had enough to drink and thinks the Belgians are doing “a perfectly good job” in their African colonies. Rory is mostly a passive punchbag, while Anthony keeps on writing those dreadful letters: “There is no sound sweeter than your knock on the door.” Yuk. Thank God Jennifer has lost her memory.
12A, 110min. In cinemas
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