Rating out of 5 stars:
Director:
Richard LaGravenese
Producer:
Wendy Finerman, Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove, Molly Smith
Screenwriter:
Richard LaGravenese, Steven Rogers
Stars:
Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Lisa Kudrow, Gina Gershon, Harry Connick
Jr., Kathy Bates, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, James Marsters, Dean Winters, Anne
Kent, Brian McGrath
MPAA Rating:
PG-13
Released:
2007
P.S I Love You
New on DVD with Mike Lippert
If a man needs to send his widow letters after he has died in order to teach her a valuable life lesson then maybe it's one that's just as well left unlearned. That's essentially the complex banality of all human nature. P.S. I Love You is one of those romantic films that spite human nature by making a lot out of nothing. Not that death is nothing, but those quiet, mournful, introspective times that usually follow it are.
I like films that make nothing out of nothing. The undervalued Catch & Release comes to mind, about a woman dealing with the unexpected death of her fiancée days before their wedding. That film handled situations how we might expect its inhabitants to handle them. When a friend attempts to commit suicide it happens and they move on from it together, and there is quiet pathos in the way a friend admits his romantic affection for the widowed main character, both of them knowing that to do anything about it would be impossible. By molding a plot around this posthumous letter gimmick, P.S. I Love You is more screenwriting than human nature, trying to make life more exciting and complex than it is. It is an artifice placed on the head of its main character Holly, forcing her to ultimately play by the strict economy of the screenplay and not her own destiny.
The film starts as Holly (Hilary Swank) and her husband Gerry (Gerard Butler, cloaking a Scottish accent beneath an Irish one) are having a fight. He is spontaneous and charming, a free spirit destined to act on impulse, and she is conservative, uptight, and can't hold a job because she hates working "for stupid people." He wants kids, she doesn't. He wants her to do whatever she loves; she wants a long term financial plan, etc. They're the kind of impossible couple you may admire but just can't quite understand. They aren't very compatible but stay together for the make-up sex. I guess two wrongs do make a right for some people.
After the credits role, the film resumes without Gerry, who has mysteriously died of a brain tumor. Holly is crushed and locks herself in her apartment for weeks, parading around in Gerry's clothes and watching old Bettie Davis movies. But on her thirtieth birthday, a cake arrives at her door. It's from Gerry. Inside the box is a letter to Holly. Apparently Gerry knew that after his death she would isolate herself from the world and so he devised an intricate plan in order to help her move on without him. He will send her letters at certain times throughout the course of a year with instructions that she must follow. Based on the opening scene, it might have been a leap of faith to assume that the uptight Holly would stop her life for a year in order to go through with this bogus plan, in which case of course, we'd have no film.
The first letters are simple. Holly gets out of the apartment, buys the bedside lamp they talked about one day getting, goes out with her two best friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) to a karaoke bar, and so on; each letter recalling in Holly a past memory of Gerry, which is seen in extended flashbacks.
Then the plot, a contrivance to begin with, bites off more than it can chew. Gerry sends Holly and her friends to Ireland to go fishing, to visit a local bar where a musician dedicates one of Gerry's songs to Holly, and other adventures like a spontaneous trip to Gerry's' parents house, where another letter awaits her. What wonderful coincidences the film depends upon in order for the successful continuation of its plot. How could Gerry be sure that Holly would be in the bar at exactly the right time to hear the song, or that she would venture to see his parents without instructing her to do so? By putting Holly into this plot she loses her human spontaneity. She isn't making logical decisions, but ones that service the narrative. A final letter informing Holly "to look for a sign" is so convenient that it borders on the divine. The film is trying too hard.
The most powerful and endearing romances are ones that strike a chord because they have the ability to touch us on a human level. It's a nice romantic notion that someone would love us enough to plan such an intricate Rube Goldberg Machine of a scheme in order to help us on our way to a better life, but the true heart of this film lies merely in the margins. The best moments are the ones with the quirky friend Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.) who is the kind of guy who says whatever he is thinking, and follows this character logic through to the end. When he leaves a message on Holly's answering machine it's the funniest thing in the film because it's exactly what Daniel would say. Or Holly's Mother (wonderfully played by Cathy Bates), who is realistic and logical, wanting her daughter to stop playing games and move on with her life.
There are other moments in which the film seems to come alive as well. One is a flashback to the moment when Gerry and Holly met that is so natural and charming that it should have been in a better film and goes on for so long you almost forget that it isn't. Kudrow and Gershon each have their own individual truthful moments, Butler is likeable and charming, a reminder that his best work has come from intimate character stories, and Swank, when allowed to fall out of playing broad comedy and into personal moments of joy and pain is as good as the material requires.
Yet the film's success is only in moments. It never comes together as a whole, because the essential human element is pushed to the sidelines in favor of extraordinary coincidences. It isn't in fact, until towards the end, in an exchange between Holly and her mother, that the film touches upon the true heart of the matter: why find the love of a life, get married, try to build a life together, only to have them die too young; What's the point in that? That scene hits so many right notes that we realize there's a great study of human nature somewhere in this material. It's just not at the forefront, where it belongs.
If a man needs to send his widow letters after he has died in order to teach her a valuable life lesson then maybe it's one that's just as well left unlearned. That's essentially the complex banality of all human nature. P.S. I Love You is one of those romantic films that spite human nature by making a lot out of nothing. Not that death is nothing, but those quiet, mournful, introspective times that usually follow it are.
I like films that make nothing out of nothing. The undervalued Catch & Release comes to mind, about a woman dealing with the unexpected death of her fiancée days before their wedding. That film handled situations how we might expect its inhabitants to handle them. When a friend attempts to commit suicide it happens and they move on from it together, and there is quiet pathos in the way a friend admits his romantic affection for the widowed main character, both of them knowing that to do anything about it would be impossible. By molding a plot around this posthumous letter gimmick, P.S. I Love You is more screenwriting than human nature, trying to make life more exciting and complex than it is. It is an artifice placed on the head of its main character Holly, forcing her to ultimately play by the strict economy of the screenplay and not her own destiny.
The film starts as Holly (Hilary Swank) and her husband Gerry (Gerard Butler, cloaking a Scottish accent beneath an Irish one) are having a fight. He is spontaneous and charming, a free spirit destined to act on impulse, and she is conservative, uptight, and can't hold a job because she hates working "for stupid people." He wants kids, she doesn't. He wants her to do whatever she loves; she wants a long term financial plan, etc. They're the kind of impossible couple you may admire but just can't quite understand. They aren't very compatible but stay together for the make-up sex. I guess two wrongs do make a right for some people.
After the credits role, the film resumes without Gerry, who has mysteriously died of a brain tumor. Holly is crushed and locks herself in her apartment for weeks, parading around in Gerry's clothes and watching old Bettie Davis movies. But on her thirtieth birthday, a cake arrives at her door. It's from Gerry. Inside the box is a letter to Holly. Apparently Gerry knew that after his death she would isolate herself from the world and so he devised an intricate plan in order to help her move on without him. He will send her letters at certain times throughout the course of a year with instructions that she must follow. Based on the opening scene, it might have been a leap of faith to assume that the uptight Holly would stop her life for a year in order to go through with this bogus plan, in which case of course, we'd have no film.
The first letters are simple. Holly gets out of the apartment, buys the bedside lamp they talked about one day getting, goes out with her two best friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) to a karaoke bar, and so on; each letter recalling in Holly a past memory of Gerry, which is seen in extended flashbacks.
Then the plot, a contrivance to begin with, bites off more than it can chew. Gerry sends Holly and her friends to Ireland to go fishing, to visit a local bar where a musician dedicates one of Gerry's songs to Holly, and other adventures like a spontaneous trip to Gerry's' parents house, where another letter awaits her. What wonderful coincidences the film depends upon in order for the successful continuation of its plot. How could Gerry be sure that Holly would be in the bar at exactly the right time to hear the song, or that she would venture to see his parents without instructing her to do so? By putting Holly into this plot she loses her human spontaneity. She isn't making logical decisions, but ones that service the narrative. A final letter informing Holly "to look for a sign" is so convenient that it borders on the divine. The film is trying too hard.
The most powerful and endearing romances are ones that strike a chord because they have the ability to touch us on a human level. It's a nice romantic notion that someone would love us enough to plan such an intricate Rube Goldberg Machine of a scheme in order to help us on our way to a better life, but the true heart of this film lies merely in the margins. The best moments are the ones with the quirky friend Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.) who is the kind of guy who says whatever he is thinking, and follows this character logic through to the end. When he leaves a message on Holly's answering machine it's the funniest thing in the film because it's exactly what Daniel would say. Or Holly's Mother (wonderfully played by Cathy Bates), who is realistic and logical, wanting her daughter to stop playing games and move on with her life.
There are other moments in which the film seems to come alive as well. One is a flashback to the moment when Gerry and Holly met that is so natural and charming that it should have been in a better film and goes on for so long you almost forget that it isn't. Kudrow and Gershon each have their own individual truthful moments, Butler is likeable and charming, a reminder that his best work has come from intimate character stories, and Swank, when allowed to fall out of playing broad comedy and into personal moments of joy and pain is as good as the material requires.
Yet the film's success is only in moments. It never comes together as a whole, because the essential human element is pushed to the sidelines in favor of extraordinary coincidences. It isn't in fact, until towards the end, in an exchange between Holly and her mother, that the film touches upon the true heart of the matter: why find the love of a life, get married, try to build a life together, only to have them die too young; What's the point in that? That scene hits so many right notes that we realize there's a great study of human nature somewhere in this material. It's just not at the forefront, where it belongs.
Copyright © Greg Roberts
