Netflix’s romantic drama The Last Letter from Your Lover is now streaming and is the second film from director Augustine Frizzell. The film jumps between a modern-day love story that plays out between Felicity Jones and Nabhaan Rizwan’s characters, while a steamy affair happens in the 1960s between Shailene Woodley’s Jennifer Stirling and Callum Turner’s Anthony O’Haire.
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ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to The Last Letter from Your Lover director Augustine Frizzell about the romance film’s theme, the chemistry between the lead actors, and more. Check out the video below or the full transcript.
Tyler Treese: Augustine, you made your directorial debut with Never Going Back. I was curious what lessons did you learn during that film that really helped you knock it out of the park?
Augustine Frizzell: Oh goodness. I think just something that I always try and do, it’s just to trust the actors to bring what they’re going to bring in, to do what they’re going to do. The best part of the entire filmmaking process is like having that collaboration and working together as a team.
The book jumped around eras and it wasn’t a traditional narrative. The movie also replicates this, but in a slightly different manner, can you discuss the challenges of shooting the story and the ways you had to jump around the different times?
Anytime you’re shooting a film, you’re usually not doing it sequentially. It’s all over the place. So that’s kind of how the shoot was, but we did build in transitions, knowing that we are going to be going from this scene to this scene and this moment to this. But then we got to the edit and all that kind of went out the window. So you’re looking for new visual cues and I worked closely with my editor, Melanie Oliver, who’s brilliant to find new transitions because inherently, you get to the edit and you need to even out more things or you need to find more of a balance. Something that felt like you needed it here, you don’t actually need it. So you’re looking for those moments to, to create that link within the footage, after the fact.
You kind of shot like two films. Past and present and it looks so visually distinct from each other. How did you manage to make sure that, you know, each area is represented?
So to be honest, my goal setting out was to make both time periods feel really cohesive. Like it was all the same movie. Anytime you’re going from character to character, to emotion, I’m always paying particular interest in what lens are we on? What’s the camera move that’s going to bring the most immediacy to the shot or to the emotion of the scene. So it always changes scene to scene, but from time periods of time, period, we didn’t change much other than set design and then the lighting from place to place is always different. But yeah, I wanted it to feel very cohesive and it was really more about the costumes, the sets, the locations, all that stuff that brought the difference between the two.
I love getting to see the older versions of the characters and there’s a sweet, elderly love story that we really don’t see often in film. Can you speak to that importance of showing that love doesn’t end when you’re growing older?
Yeah. So in the script and in the book, it was the older of Jennifer and Anthony that really melted my heart. It just felt like it’s never too late, you know? You want to believe that. You hear so many people reach a certain age and they give up, or they say, “Ah, I’m too old,” or “It’s past my time.” To think that we could say, even if I had a month, even about a day, like why not just go for it and have that love even for the little bit of time that I can capture it.
The chemistry between Shailene and Callum is so incredible in the film. It serves as the backbone of the story. When did you know that you had something really special with the two leads?
I think just meeting them even separately, they just are both so emotionally available. They’re both so curious. When we got them in a room together, it was kind of like, all right, these two are going to have some sparks. I think to them, it was also important that they did have time outside of the set and they talked. They had long conversations and they’re both just so giving on set. I felt very lucky. It’s a very lucky thing because you don’t know.
