Love Letter

Love Letter centres on Hiroko Watanabe, a woman still grieving two years after her fiancé, Itsuki Fujii, died in a mountain-climbing accident. Visiting his mother, she finds his old school yearbook and writes a letter to the address listed beside his name, even though the family home is gone. A reply comes back, signed by an Itsuki Fujii, and Hiroko learns that her correspondent is a woman who was her fiancé's classmate and who shares his name. The two begin exchanging letters, and their correspondence draws out the memories each of them holds of the same young man.

Shunji Iwai wrote and directed the film, his second feature, following Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? in 1993 and preceding Swallowtail Butterfly in 1996. Miho Nakayama plays both Hiroko and the female Itsuki, with Etsushi Toyokawa as Shigeru Akiba, and Miki Sakai and Takashi Kashiwabara appearing as the younger Itsuki Fujiis. Produced by Fuji Television Network and Herald Ace, the film runs 117 minutes.

The ratings show a widely seen and well-regarded title: on IMDb it holds 7.9 from around 13,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.8 from roughly 276 votes. The much larger IMDb vote count suggests the film has reached viewers well beyond its original Japanese release.