The Love Letter

Directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan. With Kate Capshaw, Tom Everett Scott, Tom Selleck, Blythe Danner. The power of words and images to open hearts. Helen runs, miles a day, to burn off energy: she's an emotional celibate. Going through the post at her shop, she finds a romantic and poetic letter between the couch cushions, unsigned, and thinks it's for her. It melts her resistance to feelings, and soon she undertakes an affair with Johnny, a collegiate employee. (He sees the letter and thinks she...

The Love Letter (1999) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.

The Love Letter summary of box office results, charts and release information and related links.

Helen (Kate Capshaw) runs a bookstore in Loblolly By The Sea, a small fishing community in New England where everyone seems to know everyone else's business. A 42-year-old single mother, she is emotionally distant and fearful of getting too close to anyone. George (Tom Selleck) has known Helen since they were schoolmates, and he's been in love with her for ages, but has always settled for just being her friend. Convinced she wasn't interested in him, he married another woman years ago. Helen also has another secret admirer, Johnny (Tom Everett Scott), who isn't at all put off by the fact that Helen is twice his age. Johnny, however, is currently occupied with Jennifer (Julianne Nicholson), a fellow student who also works at the bookstore and is crazy about him. Into this tangled web of unrequited love comes an amorous letter that Helen finds in the store one day. The letter bears no signature and no address; it's at once passionate and oblique, fervent and cryptic. It's very interesting stuff. So who wrote it? And to whom was the writer planning to send it? Before long, the letter has made its way through this circle, and everyone has an idea (or a hope) of who their secret love is, although no one knows for sure or just how to find out. The Love Letter marked the American debut of director Peter Ho-Sun Chan, who enjoyed success in Hong Kong with Comrades: Almost A Love Story and He's A Woman, She's A Man. The supporting cast includes Ellen DeGeneres, Blythe Danner, and Gloria Stuart. The Love Letter may be best remembered as the only major studio film to open the same week as Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Read the Empire review of The Love Letter. Find out everything you need to know about the film from the world's biggest movie destination.

Once again, Hollywood has taken a seemingly innocent and fun-loving story line and turned it on its head with promiscuity and confused sexual orientations.

Loblolly by the Sea, the jauntily named New England town that is the setting for ''The Love Letter,'' is the kind of idyllic seaside retreat that could exist only in a cheery children's folk song or a yuppie sitcom. The place radiates an alarming perkiness. And for its first three-quarters, ''The Love Letter,'' which takes place in the summer, hurtles toward a seemingly inevitable fairy-tale ending in which its nice middle-class characters all end up snugly coupled before the first nip of autumn frost.

An honest, passionate, and ultimately mysterious note is the subject of Peter Ho-Sun Chan's romantic comedy-drama, "The Love Letter," based upon the novel by Cathleen Schine. There's a lot to like here, and even though it is only the start of the big summer movie season, it was nice to sit back, relax, and watch a movie about realistic people; it's just too bad the story surrounding the characters comes off as a mere contrivance, and that the supporting cast, all wonderful actors, are criminally wasted.

The Love Letter is a 1999 American romantic comedy film directed by Peter Chan and starring Kate Capshaw, Ellen DeGeneres, Tom Everett Scott and Tom Selleck. It is based on the novel by Cathleen Schine. The original music score was composed by Luis Enriquez Bacalov. The film takes place in the New England town of Loblolly-by-the-Sea.