Letters to Juliet

L: My boyfriend claims that he enjoyed this movie. He actually started fist-pumping to the Taylor swift song that played towards the end; This has made me rethink our relationship. This movie was very hard to sit through. I ended up disliking every one of the characters and kept hoping that the movie would take a crime drama or horror turn, but that was just wishful thinking. Horrible, predictable, badly acted (gael garcia bernal and amanda seyfried in the worst performances i've ever seen from both actors).
P: The other morning, as I dipped an amaretto biscotti into a Tuscan roast cappuccino, sunbeams falling through the vines on a Tuscan style pergola dappling the Tuscan rose flagstone of the patio where I sat and mused contentedly, I was suddenly gripped by a passionate desire to go to the movies. Never one to ignore the dictates of passionate desire, I immediately sought my destiny at the Edwards Greenway Palace, presenting my Regal Crown Club card for a ticket to Letters to Juliet, a one dollar popcorn, and a refillable Coke.
Letters to Juliet is all about beautiful people leading beautiful lives in a beautiful place. I wanted so much for something terrible and ugly to happen to them but in vain. Everyone in the film talks about following passions and seeking destinies, but to judge by appearances, these peoples' passions lead them to the tanning salon every two weeks, the dentist every three months, and some designer boutique or other every season for a tasteful, new wardrobe. Of course such people summer in Tuscany (Ahhh Tuscany!), soaking up passion and earthiness and the quiet nobility of the peasant while lounging around the pool and sighing over just the most exquisite local wine that you can't get back home. Between sighs and soulful, horizon gazing poolside chats, they drive around Tuscany in a cute, European sedan looking for a certain Lorenzo Bartoli. It's an errand of love and one which conveniently excuses the characters' (and by implication, the audience's) prurient, voyeuristic consumption of a geography, a gastronomy, a mystique--in a word, of their tourism.
I am not above the vicarious enjoyment of landscape and other earthy delights, but the most intense, aesthetic pleasure of Letters to Juliet was not, surprisingly, to be had in the contemplation of Tuscany's quaint array of hills, trees, and terra cotta villas. No, the most impressive variation of scenery was on Amanda Seyfriend's face. She musters a dazzling array of toothy, teary-eyed smiles. And pouts. And longing gazes. If I were as lovely at she is, I'd surely spend hours at the mirror in narcissistic awe, and I'll bet anyone that she has. I bet she has a name for each of her expressions, and maybe a catalogue of numbered, headshots illustrating them all? I bet she gives a copy of this catalogue to the each director she works with so the director can guide her entire performance numerically.
"Amanda baby, could you start this take with a number 25, then 13 seconds in, start changing to a number 4 and hold that, just turning your head 45 degrees away from the camera right at the end, please. Great, thanks."
I had a lot of fun to trying to watch this movie against the grain if you know what I mean. In Pyongyang you can turn down the volume of the radio in your apartment, but not all the way. You certainly can't turn it off. Everyone in Pyongyang lives like fish, submerged in a ceaseless, steady stream of ideological bullshit. Thank God life's not like that in Tuscany, right?