Bullock and Reeves Write Their Way Into Each Other's Hearts in The Lake House

I’d heard some pretty tepid reviews of The Lake House, the 2006 Sandra Bullock-Keanu Reeves romance about two people engaged in a most unconventional epistolary relationship, so it wasn’t a movie I’d been dying to see. However, I love movies in which letter-writing plays a prominent part, so I finally decided to give it a shot.

Directed by Alejandro Agresti and based on the Korean movie Siworae, the film focuses on Kate Forster (Bullock), a kind doctor, and Alex Wyler (Reeves), a business-minded architect. When she departs from the lake house where she has been living, she leaves a letter in the mailbox for the home’s next occupant. He reads the letter but is confused by its contents. He puts his response into the mailbox and lifts the flag. Before long another letter appears. It only takes a little experimentation for them to discover the bizarre truth: that he is living in 2004 and she in 2006, and this mailbox is the key to their communication. (Conveniently, he never receives mail from anyone else. Maybe he didn’t tell anyone his address?)

While nobody in the movie actually time travels, the letters do, as do occasional objects, like the scarf Kate sends Alex on the day that she remembers a freak April blizzard will hit. LOST’s Daniel Faraday and Back to the Future’s Doc Brown would never approve the liberties taken with the space-time continuum here, but as long as you accept that there will be a couple of paradoxical points, this is a pretty enjoyable movie. I thought it was a little slow getting started, but once the letter-writing began in earnest, I was sucked in.

Both Kate and Alex have a distinct advantage over the other in this correspondence. Because she lives precisely two years in the future, Kate can give Alex details about things that happened on that day in 2004. (Oddly enough, given his rather materialistic outlook in the beginning, he never suggests that she send him an almanac and give him the opportunity to make a killing betting on sporting events; maybe he saw Back to the Future II and thought better of it!) Alex’s advantage is that he can manipulate past events for her instant gratification. For example, he writes graffiti on a wall downtown to let her know that they were in the same place two years apart.

As their correspondence continues and their regard for each other deepens, a chance encounter brings Alex face to face with Kate. He knows her identity, but she has no idea who he is yet, so this aspect of the movie reminded me a bit of You’ve Got Mail. However, the future Alex isn’t so easy for Kate to track down, and as she despairs of ever meeting Alex in her present, Kate’s giddiness begins to wear off. Is this long-distance relationship little more than a dream?

Earlier this year, I started reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, so I got a kick out of seeing that book about love deferred taking a prominent role in the story midway through. (Another point of similarity with You’ve Got Mail, which prominently featured Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.) Kate’s description of the novel doesn’t seem like the most accurate summary, but there certainly are thematic connections between the movie and the book, mainly having to do with the idea of waiting a long time to unite with a loved one. More than Persuasion, it reminded me of The Constant, the fan-favorite LOST episode that heavily involves both time travel (of sorts) and patient love. There’s something very sweet in this meeting of the minds, especially on Kate’s end, since she lacks the immediacy of experience that Alex gets when he meets her in his present. She loves Alex without having a clear idea of what he looks or sounds like. But getting their timelines in sync seems impossible.

I generally like Bullock in her movies, and I found her very enjoyable here. Reeves doesn’t usually seem all that engaging to me, and he lacks the warm presence of someone like Tom Hanks, but I mostly liked him too, especially the voiceovers of his letters. Probably about half the movie contains these voiceovers, and Agresti is creative in how he shows the two, so that at times we forget how much actually separates them. They seem as though they could reach out and touch each other. What this really means is that Kate must need to spend an awful lot of time out at the Lake House, which isn’t technically hers any longer, just standing by the mailbox with a pad of paper so the two of them can carry on what amounts to a cumbersome IM session. Most of the letters are quite short; some are only a few words long.

Both Kate and Alex have outside romantic interests, but only just. Kate’s is nice enough, but he’s dull as dishwater and incredibly clingy. It’s obvious in their few scenes together that Kate can’t muster any passion for him. Alex, too, has someone who’s more of a tagalong than a girlfriend, and her possessive and ditsy traits don’t make her very endearing either. Alex and Kate describe themselves to each other as single, which sparked an interesting discussion with my parents. Does that mean that they consider themselves unattached or just unmarried? The movie doesn’t make it entirely clear. My parents were shocked to realize that for me, “single” means “does not have a significant other,” while I was shocked to realize that their definition of “single” even includes people who are engaged. Is it a generational thing, I wonder?

More interesting than the not-really romantic rivals are the parents. Willeke van Ammelrooy is affectionate and slightly exotic as Kate’s mother, who clearly enjoys a very close relationship with her. I loved her emotional openness and her easy acceptance of Kate’s strange situation, and some of my favorite scenes involved their heart-to-heart talks. Alex’s relationship with his father, a famous architect reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright, is more complicated. They haven’t spoken to each other in years, and Christopher Plummer’s largely vitriolic performance makes it easy to see why. Through him, we gain a much keener understanding of what makes Alex tick.

Movies revolving around letters are hard to come by, so I certainly recommend this to those who still value the art of correspondence, though probably the best movie I’ve seen that focuses on good old-fashioned snail mail is the quiet Anthony Hopkins-Anne Bancroft vehicle 84 Charing Cross Road. Still, if letters hold as much magic for you as they do for me, this is one love story on which I will gladly put my stamp of approval.