Last Letter (2018)

Story about Closure

Casting really great all of them are good actors no awkward sences or emotions/facial expressions that seem out of place. Zhang Zifeng and Deng Enxi are both really good young actresses that have a bright future ahead of them.
Zhou Xin was the best actress in the show most likely due to all of the experience she has had. I felt exactly as she felt especially when Yin Chuan confronted her. Bian Tianyang and Hu Changlin were also both great actors both are young with a great future ahead.
Storyline
Each character had a different story arc that was each very unique to them.
Chenchen was a young boy who did not know how to cope with the loss of his mother and outwardly he seemed fine but inwardly he did not know how to express his emotions and ended up running away claiming he had no home to go to. While he was loved by his aunt and uncle he probably felt like an outcast who only was really able to interact with his grandma. He did not have a proper role model to look up to and as a result he did not know how to act his emotions.
Mumu was Chenchen's older sister and while she is a strong young lady she faced a lot of inward struggle. Her father abused her mother and her as well and when she finally gained the courage to run for help it was too late for her mother who feel into depression and ended up killing herself. All Mumu had to comfort her was her mothers old lovers letters to her who she believed would save her her brother and her mother. While he came too late meeting him gave her some closure and she was finally able to move on.
Saran(probably may favorite character) is Mumu's cousin and Zhihua's daughter who stayed with Mumu to help her through these rough times and they became each other's ride or die similar to their mothers. Saran was a sucker for love and didnt want to return home because she was scared of facing the boy that she liked but after hearings Zhinan's and Yin Chuan's story she decided she would not back down on love. She was a very youthful person that had a great interest in love and Zhang Zifeng played her very well.
Zhihua(my next favorite character at the very least her younger self) is an mature adult with a daughter but was never able to truly express herself the way her older sister was able to. She loved the guy that loved her sister and out of not knowing what to do did not deliver his love letters to her. I really admired how in the end she was able to confess to him even knowing that she would most likely be rejected. I did not really like how she pretended to be Zhinan but she probably wanted someone to vent to and was not able to find a release before talking to him.
Zhinan obviously is not in the movie as an adult but even if she killed herself she was a strong person. I just want to know exactly how she meet zhang chao and how did she fall for him(college prequel???
Yin Chuan a writer who was never able to move on from his first love and never wrote another story. After going to the reunion he thought it was funny how no one was able to notice that Zhihua was not really Zhinan and wanted to catch up with her. I do not really know why he didnt confront her sooner, but probably because he remembered that Zhihua dosen't take confrontion well. I am glad that he was able to move on and gain another idea for his next book.
I like how Zhihua and Yin Chuan never got together. Zhihua; though I do not like her husband, was married with no intentions to divorce him. Though she still acted like a school girl with a crush around him it did not seem like she loved him and overall that would've left a bad taste in our mouths since he was still in love with her dead sister.
Music
Overall not that memorable but i think anything more than what was in the movie might distract the viewers from the storyline.
I would probably rewatch this movie and would recommend people that like closure to watch this movie as well.

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Not a Zhou Xun film, but a Great Film with Zhou Xun

I saw this once around 2022 and forgot I saw it. I re-found it because of Hu Ge and 20 minutes in started vaguely recognizing it. I'm so happy the wife and I decided to watch it a second time.

And so how could I almost completely forget this particularly good movie?

1. When I watched it the first time, I was likely mad she wasn't the star but merely supporting. I had just finished RUYI and was starving for more of her work.
2. I might have been tired, and the movie runs long.
3. My memory ain't what it used to be. (But that's a fun thing with movies. I can watch again but remember very little, lol.)

This story would be perfect were it not for a simple flaw: mildly contrived. I won't spoil, but it requires someone misunderstanding who someone else is and two young characters doing something a little odd at first. What the older girl does is frankly ludicrous UNTIL the end of the story reveals why she is doing it.

As a former screenwriter, I'm also annoyed by stories that feature writers. In almost all cases a screenwriter writing about a writer flatters said writer as a 'good writer'. Do you see how insecure this is?

Picture a screenwriter thinking about what their next story will be. "Oh, I know! I'll write about someone like me -- a writer!" Painfully unimaginative. Writers must observe others and then writer about them. Naval gazing is too common and almost always dull as hell -- except in LAST LETTER. The cliches are there, but thankfully barely painful and flattering.

Once you get past these two issues, wow -- what a story! A family loses an adult daughter and very quickly family secrets start oozing out. These aren't fun soap opera moments but tragic real life stuff. I won't spoil, but three generations have to deal with the passing of this daughter and things get rather intense. Not violent, not melodramatic -- just people dealing with choices that changed their courses of their lives.

The acting and film production is solid. The movie is a little long but it doesn't feel that way. And I bet most viewers would have liked even more time in this story: namely, to see if the surviving daughter's dream came true. I hope it did.

This isn't about happy endings as much as reckoning with your past and future.

Give it a try!

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