Letters to Juliet

Directed by Gary Winick

(PG)

***

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A young American woman and an English widow search for love in Italy.

Most romantic comedies “insult our intelligence,” said Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. Letters to Juliet shows that all the genre really requires are “likable leads, a beautiful setting, and a script that follows a reliable formula.” Director Gary Winick gently guides viewers through the clunky “machinations of the plot,” said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is a young American living in Verona, Italy, where lovers leave letters near a balcony said to be that of Shakespeare’s Juliet. When Sophie finds a 50-year-old note from Claire, an English girl forced to leave behind a Italian boyfriend, she writes to suggest they track him down together. As the now-widowed Claire, Vanessa Redgrave is “luminous still,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. She brings along her grandson, played by Christopher Egan, and the two young leads become a plausible romantic pair. But the viewer’s real reward comes with the discovery that the role of Claire’s soul mate is filled by Redgrave’s own husband, Franco Nero. “Infused with a slow-burning fire,” the onscreen rapport between these two real-life lovers made this critic’s defenses melt.