Letters to Juliet

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) has a secure fact-checking job and is engaged to Victor (Gael García Bernal), a hunky restaurateur of indeterminate exotic origin who dangles hot, fresh fettuccine into her mouth. But Sophie isn’t satisfied. She really wants to write, an ambition that sets the eyes of both boyfriend and boss aglaze. When Victor seems more interested in spending their Italian vacation hunting truffles than digging her, Sophie drifts off and ends up in Verona, at the mythic home of Shakespeare’s Juliet, where a cadre of volunteer secretaries answer letters left behind by lovelorns. Soon, Sophie is tagging along as English widow Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) visits a roundelay of Italian geezers to find the farmhand she loved and left back in the ’50s. Juliet clearly intends to be fantasy, and Gary Winick’s flat direction does the material no favors.