P.S. I Love You
Her husband may be gone, but for neurotic New Yorker Holly Kennedy (Hilary Swank), the charismatic Irishman lingers like a haunting refrain. Writer and director Richard LaGravenese attempts to create Ghost without the ghost in P.S. I Love You, a beyond-the-grave love story that echoes Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990). In Truly, a deceased lover returns in spectral form to help his beloved through the grieving process, something the wily Gerry Kennedy (Gerard Butler) achieves through a series of letters to his widow.
Gerry seems charming and feckless in life, as seen in extensive flashbacks and the film’s opening scene, a drawn-out argument with dialogue ripped from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Yet after he dies from a brain tumor (which happens off-screen), a very different Gerry emerges, one who effectively micromanages his flighty wife’s life for the next year via the letters and a trip to his hometown in Ireland, where they met nearly a decade before. All of this is meant to be immensely romantic, but comes off as domineering and slightly creepy.
In the 1990s, LaGravenese became a much sought after adapter of middlebrow romances (The Bridges of Madison County, The Horse Whisperer), able to spin solid romantic storylines from flimsy, maudlin thread. But his directorial debut Living Out Loud (1998) was thoroughly disingenuous, unsuccessfully grafting a quirky, individual philosophy (ala his breakthrough film, The Fisher King) onto the conventional structure and expectations of a Hollywood romance. P.S. I Love You has similar problems.
LaGravenese and co-screenwriter Steven Rogers streamline the debut novel from chick lit author (and daughter of the Irish Prime Minister) Cecelia Ahern, and keep its deep love for all things Eire. From a wake drenched in Irish whisky (and prominently featuring The Pogues' acerbic “Fairytale of New York”), to impossibly beautiful sequences filmed in County Wicklow, P.S. I Love You seems more in love with Ireland than its deceased hero (played by 300’s Butler, who’s from Scotland).
Swank is in nearly every frame of this over-long film, and LaGravenese (who directed her in Freedom Writers) has put a great deal of effort into feminizing the usually tough-as-nails actress. The result is a dolled-up Swank whose weepy, passive performance is devoid of the powerful screen presence seen in Oscar-winners Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). She may enjoy being a girl, but hasn’t yet found a way to make that convincing.
© 2007, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.