Love Letters

For almost 40 years, fans of Jamie Lee Curtis have watched certain parts of this movie for a few reasons. None of them involve the movie itself, and that is a shame. Watching this movie for Jamie Lee Curtis alone is worth it. But for those who are willing to sit through the entire movie, will be pleasantly surprised. More than your typical love affair story, Love Letters has some hidden messages that most will miss unless you are paying attention. For starters, Anna has serious daddy issues. Part of her need to be in a relationship with a married man is not to relive the life of her mom's choices, but to have a strong daddy figure in her life. Oliver is both a sugar daddy and a father of two. Outside of anything sexual, the need for a strong masculine figure in Anna's life is paramount. Everytime we see Anna's real Father, she is scared, hesitant and down right scared of him. What kind of relationship did she have with him when she was younger and what motivated her mom to have the affair in the first place, matters to the storyline. As for the love letters, they are one sided. We never get to read anything from her mother. Just like Oliver, I wonder if Anna's mother ever responded to her lover's letters. Instead, we only hear and see Anna's reactions to her mother's lover letters. Anna relives the reaction of the male and not the female. She feels for how the man reacted as oppose to her mother. I find this intriguing to question Anna's feminine as well as masculine traits. Jamie Lee Curtis is drop dead gorgeous but also has masculine features both physical and social. Her clothes, haircut, social status and lifestyle are borderline. I also find some scenes in this movie edited out of place. Almost intentionally, its like reading a series of letters out of order, some of the scenes felt like they could have had happened earlier or later in the story. By the end of the movie, we start to question if any characters in this movie are right. In fact, most if not all are wrong. Not just wrong to each other but wrong to themselves. It is interesting to question who is the villain / antagonist in this story. One can argue that all the participants in the affair were one way or another wrong. Finally, the truth behind the production make this movie worth watching. Shot on a minimal budget, much of the cast including Curtis worked for very little. In exchange, she bared her soul and gave her all to tell this unique story.

Finally saw this 1983 independent film produced from legendary Roger Corman called "Love Letters" which starred Jamie Lee Curtis after her famous "Halloween" days. The story is simple Curtis is Anna Winter a young California radio D.J. host who around the time and after the passing of her mother finds out some secrets about mommy and her secret love life. Influence and retracing the path of passion and intimate romance is found in the footsteps of Anna as passion, love, and sex has become an obsession that she's found with that of a married man. Like mother like daughter! Living a double life is shown and it's clear that it takes emotions and complex depth for all involved. Also look for some hot eye candy scenes of Jamie Lee. Overall well done classic independent gem that teaches attraction and love and obsession are all common and tough yet it passes just as people and time do.

One need not watch the movie to know how this story ends: "love" doesn't matter and is totally irrelevant to anything. The cards are always stacked against The Other Person. Always. Happily, we have Love Letters to never let us forget.

If you're going to watch this movie for "!! HOT JLC topless scenes !!", you're missing out. If you're watching it to complete your Roger Corman collection, you're really missing out.

Watch it if you like feeding the geese on the river.

Watch it if you've lived a little and realize that the idea of "true love" is the product of an empty, irreconcilable lack.

But whatever you do, don't watch it for the soundtrack. Synthesized marimbas and glockenspiels, and Ralph Jones's proto-Michael Nyman piano arrangements will ruin any seriousness the movie tries to impart.

Watch it instead for the utterly bleak commentary on male-female relations, whether father/daughter, colleague/colleague, girlfriend/boyfriend and especially husband/wife.

If you're a JLC die-hard -- or at least the kind of JLC die-hard who knows there is more to life than chasing after upper torso shots -- consider also the connections to Blue Steel (1990). Particularly the retribution fantasies against an abusive (and in this case, also anti-Asian racist, and alcoholic) father, as well as the theme of a young intelligent heterosexual woman, as yet completely unable to make any intelligent choices with regards to the males in her life. No doubt, reassuring for the anti-feminist/giggling misogynist crowd. Though, unlike Megan Turner, Anna does have at least one normal relationship, with her close friend Wendy, who seems to have traveled around a few blocks in her life and is truly capable of offering her some advice.

Instead, in Love Letters, Anna's rejection of a conspicuous but understated incestuous desire on the part of a father wracked by inadequacy issues -- that beleaguered slob, fool enough to marry for that eternal game of whack-a-mole called "love" -- is implied by her consistent impatience with his violence, alcoholism, racism, and inappropriate physical proximities. To complete the cycle-to-be-broken, a flashback to her father repeating the same confused admonitions he'd yelled at Anna earlier that night: "What did I do, did I touch you!", "You're just like her!!" in a scene of domestic violence. Was her mother's 15 year long affair the cause of his enraged, repressed wino-nastiness, or a result, or totally unconnected altogether? The audience is rather effectively left to guess.

There are also a couple throwbacks to Halloween (1978) as JLC plays another dorked-out though successful "geek girl" type - what 22 year old in 1983 Los Angeles is going to be a DJ who spins Beethoven and likes electronic drone music?? Right on to that! We're also left to wonder about that 5 inch scar on Anna's left arm, hmm..hey wait, where'd that come from, gee...

Thumbs up also to: the poster for Dance Theater of Harlem in the radio station, the early tablecore from the old Alpha Syntauri Computer Music System, and the quasi-intellectual nods to Walter Benjamin and Peter Berger.

Though Love Letters ends by wrapping itself in conventional wisdom, the moral of this story is actually somewhat progressive, especially for the culturally reactionary Reagan/Bush/Thatcher/Botha mid-80s: While socially-imposed conservative conventionality is not a prerequisite for "love", the chemistry between the two individuals is crucial (I observed very little in the Curtis-Keach mushy-porn screw scenes, in which Anna gets zero on-screen enjoyment or reciprocation, and believe it was intentional.) Reversing the gender roles, as Anna lives out her affair as dictated by love letters written by a man who has experienced such chemistry, won't work, either. If he ever leaves her for you, the cards will always be stacked against The Other Woman.

Oh yes, and don't get involved with clueless, pretentious, suburban Porsche-driving married jerks who claim they are "fans", either. They will only end up consoling you with that ancient "you can do better than me" line.

Don't fall for it, honey. Go out with that dorky, San Francisco-bound colleague with the glasses, instead; the one who really loves you. That's the only type of guy who can keep up with you, anyway. 7.5/10.

Don't be fooled by the misleading movie poster making this look like a mild horror or suspense film; it's actually a deliciously erotic drama about an older man and the younger woman he's having an affair with. Jamie Lee plays the younger woman, who is trying to recreate the passionate love affair her mom had with someone a couple decades before.

While Jamie Lee's character fails to reach the true depth of her mother's affair, wow, is it ever fun watching her try! Yes, lots of skin is seen in those moments, if you get my drift...

One's enjoyment of this film, I would say will depend entirely on how turned-on you are by Jamie Lee Curtis. And since I've had a crush on her for years, this is, for me, a true pleasure to behold!

"Love Letters" is a remarkable and enthralling piece for many reasons. It resists plot contrivance and genre strait-jacketing to concentrate on character nuance, freshness of observation, and originality of milieu. It presents it's material with clarity, intelligence, and a refreshing lack of stylistic tropes.

Jaimie Lee plays a classical music DJ at a small, under-funded local radio station. One of her colleagues, a kind of hip nerd typical of the early 1980's time-frame, is played by 'Harold and Maude' star Bud Cort. He was, amazingly, 35 at the time but looks all of 20. During an in-studio performance by a home-made synth wizard (a delightful little sequence) she meets married photographer James Keach and almost immediately begins an affair. The film then follows the course of their various assignations until the inevitably messy conclusion, and it's ambiguous correlation with a cache of her dead mothers secret love letters.

The film captivates with it's perceptivity. The characters seem completely 'real', in the sense that they are quirky and human, and not merely constructs required to advance the plot. Their actions and motivations are often recondite, but always believable. Particularly intriguing are Jaimie Lee's relationships with her best friend, played by the delightful Amy Madigan, and her father (Western veteran Matt Clark). Amy and Jaimie create a wonderful rapport: we immediately accept that these gals are old buddies. And Clark's father is a superbly unsettling creation. We never know for sure whether his strange outbursts and creeping, leering presence are merely a combination of his boozing and grief over his wife's death or something more sinisterly incestuous.

The handling of the central sexual relationship avoids cliché and exploitation from the first meeting. The trysts are sketched with deftness and economy. Both leads are excellent. Keach plays it nicely low-key as an 'artistic' photographer turned advertising man who is, in truth, a rather selfish pseudo-intellectual bore. Curtis has never been better than here, as a tormented, passionate, almost schizophrenic character (just check her wardrobe changes from sensuous and stylish to bizarrely homely). Appearing just after her reign as the 'scream queen' of early 80's horror films, she evinces a startling, original presence, mixing controlled physicality and strength with numerous subtle character shadings. She's mesmerising, but somehow too unique to suggest a conventional 'star' presence. It's a real shame that she has not been granted such freedom since.

Written and directed by former Scorsese associate Amy Jones, who also, as yet, has done nothing as captivating, 'Love Letters' is a most interesting one-off. Eschewing trite corollaries and crowd pleasing expedience, it remains a quietly forceful achievement.