![]() ![]() In for a penny, in for a pound, they say. For her part, Kate waits patiently for Alex to "catch up" to her. Eventually, seeking to meet his soulmate, Alex seeks out Kate's 2004 counterpart. The fact that their letters are traveling through time doesn't seem to bother them. They "meet" and begin exchanging correspondence via the house's mailbox. Both live in an extravagant, glass walled house on the shore of Lake Michigan - he in 2004 and she in 2006. The Lake House is about the unlikely love affair between two lonely people: Alex (Keanu Reeves) and Kate (Sandra Bullock). How many foreign films, when "translated" into English, find their endings mangled or made over in order to pander to "mainstream" sensibilities? (Ironically, the ending of Il Mare was criticized in some circles for being too upbeat, although apparently not upbeat enough for Warner Brothers, which remove all vestiges of ambiguity.) The final scene, however, is lifted not from the original but from the Hollywood shelf of cheap cop-outs. The Lake House is based on the 2000 South Korean film Il Mare, which I have not seen. And for those who attempt to apply logic to this movie, everything will come crashing down like a poorly balanced house of cards. Unfortunately, trying doesn't necessarily mean succeeding and, even for those who buy into the basic ideas, there are credibility gaps that The Lake House cannot surmount. As premises go, this has the virtue of uniqueness - Hollywood doesn't churn out time-traveling mailbox movies on a regular basis. Although this may amount to oversimplification, Alejandro Agresti's The Lake House is essentially a romance between two people connected by a time-traveling mailbox.
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