I’ll admit to enjoying this movie slightly more as a technical film-making and acting exercise than as a romance. But I enjoyed the romance as well and loved both leading ladies (Shailene Woodley and Felicity Jones) almost as much. And I’ll admit to falling to sentimentality by the end… interestingly more so with the modern story which doesn’t seem to be the reaction of most of the hu-mans. Beep. Beep.

The movie is two two two romances in one… Felicity Jones, arguably in a frame story, is a modern reporter investigating a series of mysterious love letters she finds in the newspaper archive (no doubt for their importance to geo-politics). The letters describe an illicit romance between a married woman and a reporter back in 1965.

When I say I liked this film as a technical exercise, I mean that the flick feels like two completely different types of romantic dramas separated by fifty years of film making. Shailene Woodley’s story feels like a classic Hollywood romance with its dialog, acting, clothing, and flowery romance. It’s not exactly like a 60s romance was filmed, but it’s certainly not a modern approximation. Jones is acting in a modern romance with modern acting styles, sense of humor, and interactions. I enjoyed this exercise in filmmaking from a nerdy film history standpoint.

None of that would matter if the romances themselves didn’t work and I thought they did. The older story is certainly more melodramatic and classically romantic. I found it sweet enough in a kind of distanced, gauzy kind of way. Not “realistic”, so to speak. And that’s where the Felicity Jones story works better… not necessarily that a Hollywood romance is exactly realistic in the traditional sense, but the characters were messier, more believably human.

So there you go… watch it or don’t depending on how much either angle appeals to you. Classic, flowery, dramatic or modern realistic romance… or the technical and acting ways in which both types of Hollywood romance were portrayed.

Score: 81