Dear Amy, This is Ed writing from the dead. (LOL)You are now reading my final letter to you. I am not writing to you about the Higgs Boson or numerical orbit integration. Instead, I am writing about the horrible film that has been made from our correspondence. It turns out that the filmmakers got our story wrong.The film titled "La Corrispondenza" (Correspondence) seeks to weave a sentimental story about an old man having an adulterous affair with a woman thirty years his younger. They carry on for six "beautiful" (ha ha) years. Then, when the old geezer dies, he leaves an endless stream of letters and videos to be delivered to you.In watching this film, I kept saying out loud to the screen, "Oh, please! Not another letter!" I feel as if I have a case of crabs coming on...not from studying my favorite supernova, Crab Nebula, but from having to endure my own letters and videos! I realize that I have been pretty nosy in interfering with your life. I pried into your personal background when your inept driving took the life of your father. I coerced you into giving up a successful career as a stunt woman in films (screen name: Kamikaze) to become a student of astrophysics. I prodded you into writing a thesis called "From Gas, Stars to Supernovas: A Dialogue With Dead Stars," instead of allowing you to select your own topic.The filmmakers took an arty approach to our love affair. It was especially the "flawed" sculpture of you that I found unbearably pretentious. It never occurred to the filmmakers that all of the letters and videos were fake and that I'm still alive, having pulled off the hoax of the century.Please meet me at "our" favorite spot on Borso Ventoso.See you on the island! Love, Ed (Professor Edward Phoerum, as in "theorem")

Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore has brought many terrific films to the silver screen including "Malena", and what I would regard as an all- time classic movie "Cinema Paradiso". Some may regard this latest effort as romantic but others will look at it as quite pretentious, and unfortunately I fall into that latter category.The fine actor Jeremy Irons portrays Astrophysics Professor Dr. Ed Phoerum who for six years has been in a passionate relationship with one of his former students Amy Ryan, played by Olga Kurylenko. Attending a seminar one day,she learns of his death and goes into sudden shock and grief. However, she begins to receive many cryptic messages, CD's, and other communications which seem to indicate that he's somehow aware of her activities each day.Amy begins to investigate how this is possible and will slowly learn the truth, so that by the end of the film it will all be revealed. Sorry, but it all seemed quite preposterous to me, and additionally I was never able to connect emotionally to the characters here.

Writer/Director Giuseppe Tornatore ('Cinema Paradiso', 'The Legend of 1900', 'The Best Offer', 'Everybody's Fine') has created a love song to Italy, science, astronomy, writing as an art form, communication and that fragile love between an older professor and a student. In other's hands this combination may come saccharine and a silly treatise on life and whether we die or become part of the universe spirit. Tornatore makes it a sensitive and delicate poem of a film.Amy Ryan (Olga Kurylenko), a young student and stunt woman for films and Ed Phoerum (Jeremy Irons), a highly respected astrophysicist have an affair for 6 years, primarily an affair over distance. When Ed goes out of town, both of them keep in touch by text and video chats. All seems well and carries a light touch of humor as well as longing until Amy discovers Ed died 2 days back due to cancer. But still she receives messages and gifts under the name of Ed. Amy meets Ed's family (Shauna Macdonald, Oscar Sanders) and gradually assimilates with them. She ceases to feel lonely with the frequent input of videos she receives at strange intervals but remains surprised about the mysterious messages and gifts. How Amy copes with her life and how is Ed texting and sending gifts even after his death forms is brought to a satisfying if over long conclusion to the film. Ed suggests that she will find another man and very briefly in the end Amy encounters an old acquaintance Jason (Simon Anthon Johns), suggesting that Ed's last prediction will be fulfilled. Tornatore's writing includes some wonderful information about the stars and the theories of their life span as well as other Astronomical insights and mixes these with love poems that are radiant as delivered by both Irons and Kurylenko. Though the film opens with a passionate love scene we both hear in darkness and eventually see as the film progresses, the remainder of the film is a conversation via cell phone and video and for those of us who have problems with the obsession with those forms of interaction in today's society, Tornatore manages to soften the mechanical emptiness of their use.Ennio Morricone provides the musical score and Fabio Zamarion the exquisite photography of Italy, Scotland, and the UK. The film is in need of some editing but the spirit is there and Tornatore's little gem restores our faith that fine films are still being made.

If you like Olga, watch it for her. Shauna McDonald is wasted with a trivial part. Jeremy Irons, he's such an anachronism and he's fine for period dramas and parts that need pretentious Englishmen in them. Outside of that his skills are limited and his attraction non existent. Typical male fantasy of young beautiful woman loving an old man, and Irons makes me want to vomit with his 'love voice' where he speaks eloquently about his love for the beauty that he sees only rarely. So, he's a cheat, to his wife and to his kids. He's also one of the most banal and boring orators I've ever known and his constant talking as he reads the texts and she views his videos is enough to drive me mad. He dead but from beyond the grave all he does it try to control her and not let her grieve. And the final monologue? Oh dear God in heaven, probably one of the very worst in cinematic history.I absolutely wasted 2 hours of my life over this appalling film and although I was never a great fan of Irons, I'm put off him for life now. I'll never watch another film with him in again. Watch this if you love pretentious, boring movies that are as romantic as working overtime in an abattoir.