The Lake House *** (2006, Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Christopher Plummer) – Classic Movie Review 8815

Keanu Reeves is back in romantic mood as Alex Wyler, a frustrated architect who once occupied an unusual Chicago area lakeside house in 2004, with Sandra Bullock as a lonely doctor, Dr Kate Forrester, who two years later in 2006 begins exchanging love letters with its former resident.

Director Alejandro Agresti’s rather delightful, even enchanting The Lake House (2006) is a remake of the South Korean motion picture Il Mare [Siworae] (2000), pleasingly reuniting Reeves and Bullock for the first time since Speed in 1994.

So Alex (Reeves) and Kate (Bullock) are two seemingly unconnected people who have lived in the lake house two years apart, but find they can communicate with each other directly through the house’s mysterious mailbox. We are talking fantasy romance drama here, obviously, with its parallel time, love across time letter writing idea.

The movie might be accused of being contrived, illogical, inconsistent and baffling, perhaps even nonsensical. But it is wildly and satisfyingly romantic, beautifully played by Reeves and Bullock, and directed with full conviction and belief by Agresti. You can accept it and succumb to it or reject it, according to temperament. Reeves’s John Wick fans would hardly be thrilled, clearly. Fans of Reeves’s Sweet November would love it.

The screenplay by David Auburn is based on the motion picture Siworae by Eun-Jeong Kim and Ji-na Yeo.

Also in the cast are Christopher Plummer as Simon J Wyler, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Henry Wyler, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Dr Anna Klyczynski, Dylan Walsh as Morgan Price, Willeke van Ammelrooy as Mrs Forster and Lynn Collins as Mona.

The film is set and filmed in the Chicago area. The Lake House was built on Maple Lake, a supposedly haunted fishing lake in Willow Springs, Illinois, in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. . After filming, the house was removed and a fishing dock was erected.

It did well at the box office, grossing $52,330,111 in the US and $114,830,111 worldwide, on a $40,000,000 budget.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8815

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