I love this movie! My romance with this movie started even before it was shown. I first fell in love with it even at that time it was advertised abroad. And the rest is history—I watched this movie for countless times. Call me hopelessly romantic but can’t help falling in love with the movie—the plot, the cast and all!
Every time I watch it, I discover new things. For example, it is a re-make of a Korean romance movie Il Mare—and I watched that, too! Another discovery is the old movie of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr shown in the movie that shares almost similar plot.
Though tired from a long travel this week, I watched it again! Now, I am more observant and more intent in listening. I ended up loving it more!
This time, I can’t help going over my blogs in Yahoo! 360◦. I made a blog for this movie way back in February 2007, but more focused on the novel, Persuasion, by Jane Austen. Can’t help sharing this one: Persuasion, postedat Verses at Yahoo!360◦, February 2007.
The Lake House. When I saw the poster in the Sky Train in Canada, it made me stop and think: How do you hold on to someone you’ve never met? How, indeed! And, I didn’t waste time to watch it at home, the last romantic movie that I saw last year.
Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock) is moving out from her lake house, built all of it with glass. She is a doctor and has just begin to work in a hospital in Chicago, moving to a new flat in the center of the city. Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves) is the new owner of the lake house, a young architect who’s working in the construction of a new complex of houses at the city skirts. Alex and Kate are maintaining a correspondence, talking about the house matters, sending each other letters, which are put in the lake house’s letter box. But a strange thing is happening, because both of them find out that the letter box is working as a kind of time communication channel, between the year 2004, where Alex’s living, and 2006, the year that Kate’s actually living. After sending each other many letters talking about their lives, and Kate talking to Alex about how life will be in two years, it seems like they’re falling in love each other. But maybe they will never meet each other, because of the time distance. Nevertheless, Kate comes up with a memory from 2004, when she forgot a book in a train station, Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”, and she’ll ask Alex to go to that place in that precise moment, when she lost the book. Maybe the future of Kate is about to change, when Alex decides to meet Kate’s other self in the past, despite the fact that she has a boyfriend. They will learn that playing with time could be a little bit dangerous for both of them, but Alex will take everything into his hands to finally meet Kate in the future. (In the Movies in the Seasons of Love, posted Verses at Yahoo!360◦, February 2007)
I remember having memorized all the works of Jane Austen when I was once a member of UST Pautakan Quiz Team. Now, because I watched the movie, it made me interested what is that Persuasion written by Jane Austen that Kate is referring to as her favorite book.
That scene in the porch during Kate’s birthday when both Alex and Kate discussed this book is quite imprinted in my mind when the past and the present had the opportunity to converge and, probably, entailing a very promising future.
Curiosity made me think to read the book. However, I know that this is another archaic book written sometime in 1800s which made it quite unappealing to read. I have to resort to the internet which is the easiest way to assuage my interest on the book.
Lo and behold! I saw a sort of tagline: ‘She had been forced into prudence in her youth; she learned romance as she grew older’ Quite apt, quite inviting!
I ran through the search engine and read the synopsis, which is quite simple but quite complicated plot: At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, the man she loved, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Now, after the Napoleonic wars, Frederick is now a rich and successful Captain, a highly eligible bachelor, has gained both rank and money, and chance has thrown them together again. Anne finds herself confronted with thoughts of might-have-been as she watches Frederick court her brother-in-law’s sister, Louisa. Whom will he marry? One of Anne’s sister’s husband’s sisters? Or will he and Anne rekindle the old flame? But an accident causes Frederick to realize whom he truly cares for, and he follows Anne to Bath. But her cousin William (the heir to Kellynch Hall) is also pursuing her and is rumored to be engaged to Anne. And she must overcome this last obstacle before she can persuade Captain Wentworth as to the true nature of her affections.
I love happy endings. Who isn’t? Yes, the story, indeed led to another finale of poetic justice and requited love. It is a novel of second chances, expectations of society, and the constancy of love but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.
