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But that’s okay. I can continue to live my life and continue making choices as I see fit to make them. The great thing about a movie like The Lake House is that it makes you ask these kinds of questions, but without making you crazy. The two main characters are given an opportunity to help each other understand their past, their present and their future. In a way, the movie reminds me of Groundhog Day. Nothing ever explains why such magic realism is taking place and nothing ever has to. It’s what the characters gain from the experience that counts. The premise of the movie takes a back seat to the bigger questions that get asked within the narrative.

The Lake House takes place in 2004 and 2006. In 2004, architect Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves) has bought a house by the lake in Chicago that his father designed. He gets a letter in his mailbox from Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock), a doctor who just moved out of that same house…in 2006. The letter is dated as such. She receives letters in the mailbox in her time period and he receives letters in his mailbox in his time period. The flag on the mailbox goes up and down, signifying that a new letter is awaiting them.

Confusing? It can be, but only if you decide to think about it too much. Alex and Kate become cosmic pen-pals and eventually develop a relationship based on their letters to each other. At first, they believe they’re each pulling some kind of prank on one another, until finally Alex asks “Can this really be happening?” to which she replies “Why not?” Soon, they each make gestures that prove they’re in on something so profound and unexplainable that the best thing for them would be to accept it, make the most of it and try to conquer it by somehow meeting one another at a certain place and time in 2006.

But how do they know they don’t have a past already? Because their present intrudes on their ability to put the pieces together (if, in fact, they do fit). Alex and his brother Henry (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are currently dealing with the ailing health of their father, Simon (Christopher Plummer), himself a cold, egocentric architect who harbors some deeply hidden despair over the loss of his wife. Meanwhile, Kate has to deal with the sudden re-emergence of her former fiancé, Morgan (Dylan Walsh), with whom her relationship dissolved after a strange incident in their backyard. In a lesser movie, these secondary relationships would have been treated as mere plot points, but instead they lend a great deal of depth to both characters. As Alex and Kate continue to write each other, their relationship deepens and their love grows.

I realize how cheesy some of this sounds and that a relationship based on written letters is a naïve notion. Is it? I don’t believe so. Some of my closest friendships have been built through email and the written word and the movie understands this without being cynical about it. In fact, director Alejandro Agresti and screenwriter David Auburn (Proof) reinforce the power of this means of communication by having Alex and Kate speak to each other as though they really are in the same room. It’s a narrative device that could have sunk the movie, but it works beautifully. After all, why have long drawn-out voice-overs of these two reading their long, drawn-out letters to each other when you can condense it into dialogue not unlike an IM chat?

So many things could have gone wrong here, but miraculously hardly anything ever does. The time travel storyline could have driven me nuts with its paradoxes, but I found myself ignoring them. In the hands of a more conventional director, the material here would likely have been over-shmaltzed. The soundtrack might have featured the songs of James Blunt instead of Nick Drake. Agresti never gets heavy handed or pretentious with some of the more profound notions the story ponders. He treats the events as simply as possible, with a delicate, refined touch. He also gives us a greater, more magnificent depiction of great Chicago architecture than anything seen in The Break-Up.

Credit also goes to the cast. In my years as a film critic, I never once thought I’d ever write these words: Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock give excellent performances. I’m guessing Agresti is one of those miracle directors who can coax a great performance out of anybody (see also P.T. Anderson and Cameron Crowe). Both actors do the best work of their careers here, easily. Reeves may be limited, but he stays within his limits here and even goes beyond what is asked of him. This role doesn’t need to be showy, nor does he need to ooze charm. Reeves’ understated nature and his everyman demeanor fits the material perfectly. Bullock, meanwhile, finally delves deeply into a character and reveals so much about Kate, sometimes without saying a word.

The Lake House accomplishes so much without ever looking like it’s trying too hard. Some might argue that a great love story can’t work if the two leads don’t have instant chemistry. That might be true, but since the characters in The Lake House live two years apart from one another, the chemistry they do have feels unconventional and unusual. It’s there, but maybe it’s something deeper than chemistry. Maybe, unlike most love stories, it’s not about how great these two characters would be together (if they could only get together), but about how much greater their lives would become once they found each other. How often have you heard people say they backed out on a relationship because they didn’t feel they had instant chemistry with the other person? What if they had just spent a little more time with that person? I guess they’ll never know.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=14719&reviewer=233
originally posted: 06/19/06 02:37:34
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