Irrationally romantic remake of a South Korean film with the Italian name of Il Mare, set in a Lifetime Channel fantasyland where every romantic hero is an architect (the artistic businessman), every romantic heroine is a doctor (the nurturing career woman), and every dream house is on the water (the boundless homestead). Into this boilerplate is introduced what we must call a time wrinkle, a two-year time barrier that separates the occupants of a see-through house on stilts -- "Le Corbusier meets Frank Lloyd Wright" -- who are able to correspond with one another, and fall in love without the risk of actually having to keep company, through the agency of a magic mailbox. Only the most thoroughly enraptured viewer will be able to suppress petty thoughts of stock tips, Super Bowl outcomes, etc., that might have been passed down profitably from the future. And even the most minimally attentive viewer will be able, from far away, to see where events are tragically headed, and to wonder whether fate can (or ought to be) altered, and to brace for the sorts of time-travel conundrums that ultimately seem, well, a waste of time. Still, the initial disclosure and additional development of the situation are smooth and deft, and the glossy photography makes effective if infrequent use of Chicago's architectural glories. The Argentine director, Alejandro Agresti, is chiefly known for Valentin, which is to say chiefly known for schmaltz. He doesn't struggle against his typecasting. The on-screen casting, meanwhile, has been calculated with an eye for publicity -- the two Speed freaks, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, together again, at around 15 mph -- rather than an eye for the actual qualities they might bring to their roles. At this point in their lives, forty-two years apiece, the foremost quality they bring is middle-age denial. Their chemistry, if any, rarely enters into it. It's in the nature of things that their respective chemical components are kept incombustibly apart. Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Christopher Plummer. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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