Lived It

Shailene Woodley is living our dream Euro summer

Episode Summary

The Last Letter From Your Lover made us realise we just love watching romantic dramas about beautiful people parading across Europe in frilly dresses and linen shirts. Sue us! Also, we dig up each other’s love letter stories, so expect romance aplenty in this episode with Alexei Toliopoulos and Gen Fricker.

Episode Notes

Episode Transcription

Gen Fricker:

There's something about a letter as well. It's so intentional. You can't write a letter sitting on the toilet or on the bus.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Spoken like someone who's tried.

Gen Fricker:

Me with my giant quill and ink pad trying to balance my scroll.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Trying to find purchase somewhere.

Gen Fricker:

To whom it may concern, I'm Gen Fricker.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And it's yours truly, Alexei Toliopoulos. This is The Big Film Buffet, a popular culture podcast that will give you your what to watch recommendations. And this week there is a big movie coming out on Netflix that we just need to talk about. It is called The Last Letter From Your Lover.

Speaker 3:

Dear Mrs. Stirling, when you looked at me...

Speaker 4:

You're here to write marvellous things about my husband, I believe.

Speaker 3:

Is that right? In that moment, something changed.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

So this new film, The Last Letter From Your Lover is adapted from a hit novel by Jojo Moyes. It's a bestselling novel that is all in that lovey romantic genre. And it's getting this big, beautiful film adaptation that's coming out this weekend. It's hotly anticipated.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. It's very exciting. It's very lush historical period piece. If you're a fan of people kind of lounging in the French Riviera. If you like costumes, if you love people with like funny accents, old timey accents, it's got people steamed.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely. I think there's something about that kind of escapism that a big romantic film like this, that you're saying lives in luxury. Those kind of elegant costumes that really harkens back to classic Hollywood or classic English films as well that just feels so luxurious. And it's kind of a genre that we don't see every year really. Something that's like a big, beautiful period piece like this that lets you soak into those feelings.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. It's definitely one for people who love... Atonement is kind of on the same vibe. Beautiful, lush, lots of yearning. Lots of like, ooh, like misunderstandings, things like that.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. For those that love yearning, there is a movie finally for you.

Gen Fricker:

Absolutely. And I love watching these films because I love pure escapism. So I love watching beautiful people wearing beautiful things in beautiful locations.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. You're yearning yourself these days so you need to see it represented on screen.

Gen Fricker:

I'm full-time yearn. I'm and eternal yearner, but it's also one of those films that talks about a brief fling. Like a romantic affair, which I think is such a chic idea in film. Not recommending it in life, but in film.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It really is like that chic idea. So the summary of what this movie is about, it's kind of these two parallel stories. One is set in the 1960s were Shailene Woodley plays this aristocratic socialite who's married to a very serious man, if you will. And she has a brief encounter that leads to this romance that's built through love letters and then cut to, parallel style, the 21st century where we've got academy award nominee, Felicity Jones, playing a reporter journalist who has uncovered these letters from days of yore and finds this romantic story and wants to write a piece, an article, an investigation into what this very romantic love affair was and track down these people to find out if they ever found each other again.

Gen Fricker:

Have you ever written a love letter, Alexei?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I would say I've written a lot of texts with a lot of red hearted emojis, but I think that I would have only written a love letter in a very innocent, school boy, way back when I was like... Before I came of any age. When I was just a twinkle in my own eye.

Gen Fricker:

What?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

When I was a young little lovesick boy, when I would have been a preteen, that would have just been writing letters to some boys that girls like, I think you're beautiful, and I'm interested in you in friendship and more.

Gen Fricker:

Aw, that's sweet. I think that's really beautiful.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

What about you? Have you ever written a love letter Gen Fricker?

Gen Fricker:

I love a love letter, frankly.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, of course.

Gen Fricker:

I love a love letter.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

You've got one of... Genevieve's signed off at the end of a letter. Oh my God. That's just romance incarnate.

Gen Fricker:

Yours, G. You know what I mean? If I did that? Love that. I just remember when I was a kid, I had a very big crush on my next door neighbour. He was two years older than me. So in those days that was huge. You know what I mean? And I remember once for Valentine's day, I feel like Dolly or Girlfriend magazine had these cutout love letters that you could give to people. You just fill in their name.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

What the heck?

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. And so I cut one out and then I ran up the road and I dropped it in his letterbox and I didn't sign it. It was a secret love letter. But then his mom absolutely figured it out and asked me, she was like, were you at our house earlier? And then I was like, nope.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Well tragically, either your crush was the progeny of the greatest handwriting experts Australia has to offer.

Gen Fricker:

I know.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

The jig was up almost immediately.

Gen Fricker:

I know, but I love a love letter. I love getting letters. I've got a bunch of love letters from an ex that's in one of my books that he gave me.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Whoa, you're blushing, dude. My God. I'm feeling the hate from you right now.

Gen Fricker:

I just think love letters are nice because it's like, if something ends, you still have these very physical memories of when things were good. Which can be good or bad, because then it's like, you can burn them.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Another very cinematic element is burning love letters.

Gen Fricker:

I'm a very dramatic and extra person. So for me, love letters are perfect.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

There's something about those keepsakes that we keep. Those physical mementos of our own past. I think that's the clever thing that this film does, or this story does in tapping into those things with like Felicity Jones, being this journalist who uncovers these physical momentos and there's something so relatable about that. Just finding those things and feeling those hot emotions just kind of like come off of them and you just want to sink deeper. There's always curiosity there because I think it's a fairly relatable, common thing to have a shoe box full of mementos from your relationships and time's passed.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, for sure. And I think also there's something about a letter as well. It's so intentional. You can't write a letter sitting on the toilet or on the bus.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Spoken like someone who's tried.

Gen Fricker:

Me with my giant quill and ink pad trying to balance my scroll.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Trying to find purchase somewhere.

Gen Fricker:

No but like, as in a love letter, when I think about love letters, I think about sitting down somewhere, really taking the time. If you're writing it by hand as well, trying to write really neatly, making sure you don't make any mistakes. It is the most intentional thing you can do to show someone I'm thinking about you. And I'm thinking about you to a point where I'm blocking out everything else. It's the one task I'm doing. Then maybe spritz it with some perfume.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, that's part of it too. I've definitely spritzed some Lynx deodorant onto a letter, a note that I've given somebody.

Gen Fricker:

Africa.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes. Make it smell like... Well, I've actually bought the chocolate scented Lynx because I'm quite a sweetie pie. I'm like, I got to smell like dessert, so people get the essence of vanilla, if you will.

Gen Fricker:

But yes. There's something very sensual about a letter as well, like the physical aspect of it. Holding something in your hands.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's physical. It's emotional.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. So I feel like it's such rich ground for cinema. And then to add on that top of that, an illicit affair.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely. And I think what this really taps into is that very cinematic idea of what I call the brief encounter, which is that star crossed lovers feeling that I think lives in reality. People like you and I, and the listeners here as well, that fantasy that everyone has, where you meet someone, perhaps you're on holiday, or you just bump into someone, like that meet cute feeling of like bumping into someone, dropping all your things, but then you have that fantasy go like, well, what if? What if I pursued something with this person? Or there's someone just sticks into your brain, they've got that sticky quality where I think about that person, where it's a very fast crush. That lightning bolt feeling. And it kind of is that fantasy that everyone has, where you have that feeling of like, well, what if I pursued this?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Or what if for some reason I can't do it? And it's a very rich cinematic ground, like the original primordial texts for this is one of the great epic filmmakers, David Lane, made this film in the forties called Brief Encounter. Very aptly named. It's based on an old Coward play. And it's these two people, a woman who's married to a man who is a good man, but she's not excited by him anymore. And she falls in love with a doctor and it's that chance encounter that they have, and then they have this emotional bond that develops, this romance that develops.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And then you've got stuff like the Before trilogy. Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and then Before Midnight. And In the Mood for Love, the Wong Kar-wai film that I think really tap into those ideas of these fantasies that people have every day and then translating them cinematically to be all about those feelings. Movies like Moonlight as well, where you kind of get stuck on someone where it could never have really happened, but you've got those feelings that never die. And I think here we've got that so well executed by Shailene Woodley, having those feelings of longing for this man played by Callum Turner that feel everlasting. It's like that escapism love of like, they've met on a holiday, where your inhibitions are a little bit more down, so you feel more open to the world. You're out there exploring. You've got this exploratory, adventurous nature about you and what is more romantic than that?

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. I mean, I feel like everyone is their freest self on holiday. That's why I always buy wack clothes when I'm on holiday, because I'm like, yeah, this is who I am now. This is who I'll be forever. And then you get back home and you're like, I don't know why I bought it.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I'm never going to wear this cabana shorts in my everyday life.

Gen Fricker:

I'm never gonna wear this beaded headpiece. I just feel like that's the seed of the freedom and the idealisation you have for yourself on holiday. And then that can grow into idolising someone you meet on holiday, or you meet in a very specific place. And then being like, well, this is who we could be forever. Which of course you can't, which is part of the reason I think that films like these get us. Is that you know, on some level, it will end. Either the holiday part, the idealisation part, or the idea that these people stepping out of perhaps their real relationships.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And it's captured so beautifully as well, that very high end cinematic quality that this movie has of capturing this beautiful holiday that they take in the most romantic spots of the Mediterranean, where it feels like this gorgeous luxury, almost like classic 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock films. It's interesting to me because this character seems more like a Grace Kelly type. Like kind of elegant. I think it brings a more human quality having Shailene Woodley play this character, who often plays underdogs or more down to earth characters. I think it adds this human quality to her where it makes it more relatable than having the absolute Hollywood end of your actual royalties, like Grace Kelly wandering around.

Gen Fricker:

Totally.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And I think it just makes it feel more real while still having all this luxury and beauty and sweeping camera movements and period costumes.

Gen Fricker:

Beautiful cars as well.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh my God, like Rolls-Royces with the little sideboards on them and stuff. Just really beautiful, creamy elegance, if you will, that I think captures and then auditorily as well, like in the music. That's something that I think is really interesting that you don't see in these kinds of films, because usually they're all about soaking into the luxury. But I think that the director here, Augustine Frizzell, has made a great choice by not just having the sweeping score, but to also have this love and excitement be built by classic, doo-wop music as well. Like very modern 1960s music that's in contrast to the European landscapes, and the European accents that we're hearing. But to have very modern, at that time, contemporary American pop music with doo-wop, it feels like it's bringing these things into their modern day and making it feel exciting in that way and sort of just being sweeping.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. It's that break from tradition. You can see that contrast in Callum Turner's character, he plays Anthony O'Hare. He's this journalist who shows up to the French Riviera to interview Jennifer Sterling. He's wearing these black suits and they look very heavy and he's very pale and pallid, and they're in this very beautiful glamorous place. And there's something about that contrast between the uptightness, the darkness of this man, and then how glamorous Shailene Woodley is in this place. She's got these big, beautiful hats, these big flowy dresses and things like that. And they're on these boats and things, and he's still wearing these very tight...

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Constrictive clothing.

Gen Fricker:

Exactly. Right. And I think in that way, it's that this movie plays on these contrasts a lot and it's the same with the doo-wop music. It's actually kind of dangerous and it's on the verge of something. And we know obviously through being where we are in history and whatever, what do-wop means politically and culturally and things like that. And so something is on the cusp of happening.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. It's playing with those ideas of escapism and their freedom from I guess the oppressiveness of this relationship. It's not evil or anything, but it's constructive, it's boring. It's something that she wants to escape from. It's shown in the actual language of the film. When we're in England, it's mainly indoors. It's mainly nighttime, and like darkness and feels cloudy. And then when they escape to the holiday, it's this romantic land of sunshine, blue skies, the most beautiful crystal blue sea of the Mediterranean ocean and the GNC, if you will.

Gen Fricker:

This is your homeland, no?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes. The old country for me, when I watched this film. And then as well, the two parallel stories, almost like this is in my language, I would say The Godfather part two, where we've got a story set in the present day and a story in the past.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's an interesting way to look at a story like this, of these star-crossed lovers, because I think it almost is a commentary on why we are fascinated with these stories in the first place. To have so much of the onus of the story be put on the Felicity Jones character, this journalist looking back and investigating this romance. And it's from the perspective of someone who perhaps their own romantic life is to quote the Friends theme song, D-O-A. I think it's really cool about the dissection of this movie if you will, between these two temporal spaces. Felicity Jones who we know from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, being inspired by these love letters that she's reading and slowly forming this kind of cheeky, sweet romance with the archivist who works at the archive, the library, where they are finding all these old love letters played by Nabhaan Rizwan, who is an absolute scene stealer in 1917. And I think he's an exciting actor as well for them to kind of be falling in love with. And I think it makes this interesting two time spaces love story.

Gen Fricker:

Again, another fantasy of mine is falling in love with someone in a library.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh wow. Because everything's in hushed tones.

Gen Fricker:

It's all just eyes. It's eye contact.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Wow. Gen is desperate for hush tones and eye contacts.

Gen Fricker:

I love going to the library. I love making eye contact with people in the library. But don't talk to me. I'm reading.

Gen Fricker:

It's quite a buzzy cast. Shailene Woodley leading it as Jennifer Sterling. Joe Alwyn as Lawrence Sterling, her husband, who you might know from The Favourite, you might know as being Taylor Swift's lover. The whole album Lover is basically about him.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Really? My God. This is what the stuff I should be looking up at the library is. This is where I'm truly uninformed.

Gen Fricker:

Well you can't because that's music and the library has to be quiet.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

True, true, true. I'm so used to seeing these movies from old Hollywood. Watching them now with contemporary actors that are around my age or younger, makes me feel so old. Seeing these young, modern heads popping out of gorgeous beige, holiday wear from days of yore or beautiful period costumes with a head that looks like a guy that I know. It's just like, oh man. That makes me feel old, like I'm becoming ancient myself.

Gen Fricker:

I know. It's like, I'm not old enough to be married, let alone be holidaying on the French Riviera and taking a lover. This is crazy.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I'm so used to these holidays with people me on a Club Med, but instead it's not.

Gen Fricker:

Lex if you could choose one or the other, do you prefer movies kind of grounded in a gritty reality or movies that are pure fantasy, like The Last Letter From Your Lover?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I need both. If you watch as many movies as I do, you need to have that balance to keep you in check so you don't lose your mind of like some things that'll throw you right down, like a near realist take on reality where everything feels real and authentic. And then stuff like The Last Letter From Your Lover where you're like, I need to escape. I need to be thrown into a world of fantasy and live out my own dreams that would never happen, such as travelling overseas and having a beautiful holiday. But what about yourself? Do you feel that you gravitate towards one or the other?

Gen Fricker:

I think it depends on where I'm at. So for instance, with lock down happening at the moment, I desperately just want movies that are fantasy. I don't need gritty reality right now. But when I was watching this movie, I was thinking about how it's kind of the antithesis to Marriage Story with Scarlett Johannson and Adam Driver, which is just so mumble core, hyper real investigation of a marriage breaking down and where love goes when it ends romantically and things like that and how people change. And it would be really interesting to put them back to back.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Wow. That's a double bill. Yeah. That'll give you like a ricochet of the head going between the two. Also I think this film kind of finds that balance in itself by having these two temporal opposite storylines. These two timelines in the sixties where it fuels fantasy and then it kind of crashes to reality as well. But then you've also got the more modern day, every day, going through the motion story of an investigator. It's interesting to find that balance where it allows you to live the fantasy because it's got aspects of every day, contemporary, modern day reality. I think that's a nice balance of strikes. I got to give it up to director Augustine Frizzell. This is their second feature film, but they've kind of become this hot director to watch. She was also the director of a few episodes of Euphoria, including the first episode, which you know that means they are the tone set-up.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

That's what that means when you get that director, directing that first episode. They set the tone, they set the style. And so they've been a director to watch for some time now. And I was reading about this, that she is married to another filmmaker, David Lowery, who directed A Ghost Story, Pete's Dragon remake, and the upcoming The Green Knight starring Dev Patel. And he's a great filmmaker as well. And I was reading about them, how they met years ago, and then they reconnected and they started writing letters to each other. As building foundations of their romance was also through letter writing. So I think that's why Augustine Frizzell was kind of drawn to this book to adapt it to the big screen. And it's interesting to see someone from a modern day who has their romance built on the written word and how they adapted to the big screen. I think there's something interesting in there.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. I think it's interesting that you mentioned that she directed a few episodes of Euphoria because I feel like at the moment, that TV show's really held up. It's very cutting edge, very modern, very dictating what the modern cultural visual aesthetic is. You know what I mean? And then for her to then take that sharp left turn into a full-blown period drama set in England and across 50, 60 years or whatever, I think is really cool. It shows that there's so much more to see from her. And this is quite an exciting effort from Augustine Frizzell. Yeah.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely. I anticipate very big things from them in the future.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

So once again, the film is The Last Letter From Your Lover. It is arriving on Netflix this weekend and we think that you're going to get a real kick out of this film.

Gen Fricker:

I'm going to watch it again, and then once I'm back, you'll see me in the library making love to people in [inaudible 00:23:22].

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh my Lord. She's yearning again.

Gen Fricker:

I'm yearning. Oh no. I'm on my yearn era, as the kids would say.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Thank you for listening to The Big Film Buffet. If you like what you hear, give us five stars on your podcatcher of choice and give us a little review if you can.

Gen Fricker:

This was hosted by Alexei Toliopoulos and me, Gen Fricker.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Produced by Michael Sun, and Anu Hasbold.

Gen Fricker:

Edited by Geoffrey O'Connor.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Executive produced by Tony Broderick and Melanie Mahony.