The Last Letter from Your Lover | 2021 | TV-14 | – 6.3.5

Why is “The Last Letter from Your Lover” rated TV-14? The TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board rating indicates that “this program contains some material that many parents would find unsuitable for children under 14 years of age.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes several sex scenes and implied sex scenes with little nudity, discussions of infidelity and loveless marriages, and at least 5 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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With two interwoven love stories, the film follows a journalist (Felicity Jones) as she discovers a packet of intriguing love letters from 1965. When she finds a secret story in them, she gets to know the forbidden lovers (Shailene Woodley and Callum Turner) and also discovers a love story of her own with a colleague (Nabhaan Rizwan). Also with Emma Appleton, Ncuti Gatwa, Joe Alwyn, Ben Cross and Diana Kent. Directed by Augustine Frizzell. Several lines of dialogue are spoken in French without translation. [Running Time: 1:50]

The Last Letter from Your Lover SEX/NUDITY 6

 – A man and a woman kiss in a doorway, and in a different scene they enter a coatroom in a bar and have sex in a corner, standing up; we see them kissing and moving rhythmically as she gasps and grimaces (almost all from the waist up and we see one of her lower legs when her knee-length skirt rides up). A man and a woman dance on a dance floor in a flashback and they step closer together and dance intimately; we then see the couple in the man’s hotel room, where they kiss for several seconds, lie down and next morning they are shown with their shoulders above a sheet (sex is implied). A man and a woman dance closely and the scene cuts to his apartment, where they kiss for several seconds and they move out of the frame; the scene cuts to the next morning, when we see their bare shoulders above the sheets in bed (sex is implied).
► A woman sees her boyfriend in a street and she passes out, is revived in his arms and they go to his hotel, where they kiss for several seconds; they lie down and he caresses her thigh (her skirt hikes up), and the scene cuts to the next morning, when he asks her to accompany him to New York, but she refuses because she now has a young child. A man and a woman embrace and kiss for several seconds. A man and a woman are shown in a bed with only their bare shoulders showing above the sheets; the scene cuts to the woman across the room and covered in a large blanket and he asks to see her again, but she grabs her clothes and leaves. A man and woman meet in a park after several years have passed and she caresses his face, he holds her hand, and they imagine themselves in 1965, meeting on a train, kissing, and leaving the country together. We see a man and a woman holding hands briefly in a parked car; later, they embrace in a park and kiss for several seconds. A married woman tries to kiss a single man, he pulls away and she runs out of his hotel room.
► A woman receives a note from a man asking her to meet him at a park and she begins to sneak away from home many times to see him when her husband is away on business; the man asks her to run away with him to New York and she goes to meet him at a train station, but is injured in a serious car crash that causes her to have amnesia (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A woman passes out and revives in the arms of a man she thought was dead (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details); they spend some time together and he asks her to run away with him, but she refuses and he leaves town.
► A man tells a woman that his ex-girlfriend left him because he does not believe in God. A woman tells a man that she broke up with her boyfriend several times, they had sex for quite a while, and they broke up for good because she did not want children. A man jokes that he is a serial bigamist. In flashbacks, we see that a woman married to a misogynistic man falls in love with another man, who tells the woman, “I was unfaithful” [to his wife, who divorced him]. A letters states that a man was envious of a woman’s husband, who would lie beside her nightly in bed. Several letters include statements of “I love you” from a man to a woman and she tells him she loves him in person.
► A woman wears a floor length nightgown that reveals some cleavage and when she stands in front of a window, we see a suggestion of an outline of her buttocks and thighs. A woman wears low-cut dresses that reveal cleavage and also have V-necklines in the back. A woman appears to be wearing the pointy bras of the 1960s. A woman at a swimming pool wears a 1960s-style swimsuit that reveals cleavage and part of her back and legs to the upper thighs and she quickly covers herself with a long robe when a man arrives.

The Last Letter from Your Lover VIOLENCE/GORE 3

 – A woman leaves her wedding ring on a table at home and runs to a male friend’s house, he drives her to a train station and on the way a car approaches them too fast from a side street, we hear squealing tires as the woman looks frightened and we see the second car smashed up against the driver’s side window of the first car; the driver is shown leaning against the window, bloody, the windshield and the windows are shattered and covered in blood and we cannot see the passenger that was in the backseat but later hear that she was seriously injured and has amnesia (we see a long scar down her cheek, which she covers with makeup) and that the driver never regained consciousness and died.
► A husband is consistently rude to his wife and dinner guests in several scenes, loudly talking over them, belittling them, implying they know nothing, and sometimes leaving altogether to go on sudden business trips. In front of many guests at a large dinner, a husband says that his wife only understands Vogue magazine and he tells her to stop talking and not to drink alcohol.
► A married woman finds a love letter to her from her boyfriend in a book; she confronts her husband about it and he lies, saying that the second man died in a car crash in which she was seriously injured and in later scenes, she finds another letter in a shoebox and a third letter in a desk drawer in her husband’s study. A woman argues with her husband, and he grabs her and snarls, “I will destroy you,” if she tries to leave him and take their preschool daughter with her; she slaps his hands away and he stalks out of the scene. A woman takes her child to New York and we later hear that she left her husband.
► We hear that a woman has died. A man and a woman argue briefly several times and the woman argues with another man in one scene. A man tells a woman she cannot have her sandwich in an archives room, so she stuffs the whole thing in her mouth and chews with her mouth open. A woman chews gum for several seconds with her mouth open and swallows it. A woman argues with another woman in two scenes. A man at a party says the host and his wife are boring, and the wife hears him and tells him sternly that he should leave.

The Last Letter from Your Lover LANGUAGE 5

 – About 5 F-words, 9 scatological terms, 1 mild obscenity, name- calling (ungracious pig, socially inept, drunken fool), exclamations (jeez, oh my gosh, for goodness sake, shucks), 5 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Christ, Holy [scatological term deleted]). | profanity glossary |

The Last Letter from Your Lover SUBSTANCE USE

 – Two men in a bar hold short glasses of liquor, several people on a bar’s dance floor hold tall cocktails and a man and a woman each drink a shot of liquor and later sip from glasses of beer, a man in a restaurant holds a short glass of whiskey but does not drink it, a dozen guests have glasses of wine and champagne at each place setting at a couple of dinner parties where a man and a woman are seen sipping wine, a woman finishes a glass of champagne and asks for more until her husband loudly tells her no, and a corked bottle of wine is seen on the deck of a boat (it is untouched). Several flashback scenes show a man lighting and smoking cigarettes indoors at home and in restaurants, a woman smokes in a few scenes and an older woman holds a lit cigarette in a cafe and does not smoke, a woman lights another woman’s cigarette with a huge table lighter, and we see a cigarette butt in an ashtray.

The Last Letter from Your Lover DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Misogyny, men who feel they must control others, money, power, doomed love affairs, secrets, obsession, adultery, tragedy, relationships, family, death, loss, regret, aging, loneliness, car crashes, reconciliation.

The Last Letter from Your Lover MESSAGE

 – Love is sometimes painful and tragic.