Love Letters

Jamie Lee Curtis stars as a young public radio DJ who discovers a box of old love letters kept by her late mother that chronicles a decades-long, long-distance affair. Inspired by the passion in these letters from her young mother's lover, she begins an affair with an older married man. As played by James Keach, the guy she fixates on is a talented still photographer who makes his interest in her clear but never wants to give up his wife and family. Curtis's Anna Winter isn't completely sure why she pursues this man and falls so deeply for him, but it's clear much of it has to do with her complicated relationship with her alcoholic father (Matt Clark) and her newly found knowledge that her mother loved someone else but stayed with her father for her sake.

Love Letters was written and directed by Amy Holden Jones, who is most famous for being the screenwriter of Mystic Pizza and Indecent Proposal. Jones came up through the Roger Corman school of exploitation cinema as an editor along with fellow future directors Joe Dante and Allan Arkush. She co-edited their respective directorial debuts, Hollywood Boulevard in 1976, as well as the mesmerizing short documentary by fellow Corman alum Martin Scorsese, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince in 1978, and fellow editor-turned-director Hal Ashby's 1981 comedy Second-Hand Hearts. Jones had just finished her directorial debut for Corman, The Slumber Party Massacre, in 1982, and very much wanted to next do something outside of horror so she wouldn't get pigeonholed in that genre. In addition to exploitation pictures, Corman was at the time distributing European new wave films by Truffaut, Fellini, and Bergman, and he encouraged Jones to aim for the art house rather than the grindhouse, saying that as long as her second feature contained plenty of nudity, he be happy to produce it.

The story idea came about because Jones spent most of her time in California while her husband remained on the East Coast, and letters were their main form of communication. Jones wondered what the effect of reading their intimate correspondence would be on their young daughter if she later found them and read them. A savvy producer from the Corman school, Jones wrote a low-budget indie script with just a few characters and locations she already had access to. She wrote the lead role for Meg Tilly but couldn't afford the up-and-coming actress. The well-established Curtis lobbied for the role and agreed to the tiny salary and contractual nudity to break free of her scream-queen status with a more emotionally complex role. Her performance is excellent, as are those of the supporting cast, which includes Amy Madigan as Alex's best friend, Bud Cort as a fellow DJ, and Larry Cedar, Lyman Ward, and Rance Howard in memorable small roles.

Jones's intelligent script avoids spelling things out or overtly spoon-feeding her themes to the audience. She creates a compelling story of an adulterous affair from the perspective of the "other woman." Curtis makes her character's youthful motivations and choices seem pure and plausible, frustrating and fascinating, resulting in a sharp character study rather than a melodrama or exploitation film. Jones indulges in a few dream sequences, some of which feel ill-advised, but that trope was as common to this style of filmmaking in this era as was the frequent use of female nudity.