Martine (Winona Ryder, Black Swan) is a theater director in New York and she is directing her boyfriend, Raymond (Josh Hamilton), along with a group of actor/friends in a new play she is writing. The troupe is joined by Tyrone (James Franco, 127 Hours), a newcomer to the group, but a friend of one of the actresses, Tyrone immediately clashes with the group, being completely adversarial, but always very attentive to Martine, much to Raymond’s chagrin. As Tyrone’s tendrils begin to work their way through the group, tearing it apart, Martine begins to rewrite the play and finds herself suspecting Raymond of infidelity with Anita (Marin Ireland), the main actress in the play. As the lovers cheat within their roles for the play, Martine changes the storyline such that Raymond is actually poisoning his wife instead of just simply flirting with Anita, even as Martine begins having hallucinations and suspects that someone is poisoning her. She can’t determine what is reality and what is a dream-state, which is very confusing for her. And also for the audience… and herein lies the main problem with The Letter, but definitely not the only problem.
The movie clocks in at a little over an hour and a half, and during the first 25 minutes of the film, nothing happens. Literally, nothing happens. The acting troupe is working on their lines and Martine is talking about a dream she had, maybe. I’m not really clear on that, nor much of the film, to be honest. The audio is poor and this is possibly intentional. While Martine is reading her "letter" you can hear her quite clearly, but when she and the rest of the cast are speaking to one another, they often repeat themselves (or possibly this is another tortuous trick of Martine’s mind that causes undue suffering for those viewing the film), and in much lower tones than Martine’s recitations. This caused me to turn the volume up and down for the first few minutes, only to give up and turn on subtitles, in the hopes that I had some chance of following what was going on.
Now, don’t get me wrong, movies like Memento where there is some sort of psychological strangeness going on are well and good, brilliant, in fact. But The Letter was simply confusing and annoying. It didn’t even have a good or understandable resolution, quite frankly. I guess I know what happened, but I am not sure and, to be honest, I don’t care. The characters weren’t likeable such that I care what happened to them anyway. There’s one great scene in the film and it’s during one of Martine’s dreams (I guess). She is on the street and a man in a suit is coming up behind her. When she turns to face him, he begins to run away and the scene cuts out there. It looked like a mistake, but I found it hysterical. While I don’t typically love indie flicks, I can certainly still appreciate a good movie. The Letter is not a good movie, at all. It is not a thriller, regardless of what the trailer may imply. The trailer, by the way, is the only special feature on the disc and while I wasn’t looking forward to spending any more time with this work, a featurette explaining what the hell was going on would have been appreciated. I hate to be so hard on a film, but I found nothing redemptive (aside from the scene I laughed at) in this film, not even Ryder and Franco, both of whom I normally enjoy. The Letter gets an "F" in my book.
