![]() | This article needs a plot summary.(July 2021) |
The Letter | |
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Directed by | Manoel de Oliveira |
Written by | Manoel de Oliveira Jacques Parsi |
Starring | Chiara Mastroianni |
Release dates |
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Running time | 107 minutes |
Countries | France Portugal |
Languages | French Portuguese |
Box office | $766,920 [1] |
The Letter (French : La Lettre, Portuguese : A Carta) is a 1999 French-Portuguese drama film directed by Manoel de Oliveira. It tells the story of a married woman who has feelings for another man, and who confesses her feelings to her friend, a cloistered nun. The film is loosely based on the 1678 French novel The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette. [2] [3] [4]
The film was entered into the 1999 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize. [5]
This adaptation of the novel The Princess of Cleves is about the thwarted love of Catherine of Chartres who, after a disappointment in love, decides to marry a very famous doctor, Jacques de Cleves, without feeling any love for him. As a result, she falls in love with a fashionable singer, Pedro Abrunhosa. Before his death, Catherine's mother tries to separate her from the man she is in love with. After her mother's death, she finds herself torn between her desire to be with this singer and her desire to be faithful to her husband. A religious friend, to whom she confides, tries to help her to sort things out.
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac, known professionally as Catherine Deneuve, is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recognition for her portrayal of icy, aloof, and mysterious beauties for various directors, including Jacques Demy, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, and Roman Polanski. In 1985, she succeeded Mireille Mathieu as the official face of Marianne, France's national symbol of liberty. A 14-time César Award nominee, she won for her performances in Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980), for which she also won the David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress, and Régis Wargnier's Indochine (1992).
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Pedro Machado Abrunhosa is a Portuguese singer, songwriter, musician and composer. Trained in jazz music, Abrunhosa started his career in the 1980s playing in jazz bands and teaching in music and art schools in Porto. He is a co-founder of the Jazz School of Porto.
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Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about World War I. In 1931 he completed his first film Douro, Faina Fluvial, a documentary about his home city Porto made in the city symphony genre. He made his feature film debut in 1942 with Aniki-Bóbó and continued to make shorts and documentaries for the next 30 years, gaining a minimal amount of recognition without being considered a major world film director.
La Princesse de Clèves is a French novel which was published anonymously in March 1678. It was regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the psychological novel and a great classic work. Its author is generally held to be Madame de La Fayette.
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Chiara Charlotte Mastroianni is a French actress and singer. She is the daughter of Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve.
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The Princess of Montpensier is a 2010 French period romance film directed by Bertrand Tavernier, inspired by a short story of the same name published anonymously by Madame de La Fayette in 1662. It stars Mélanie Thierry in the title role, alongside Gaspard Ulliel, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Lambert Wilson and Raphaël Personnaz.
The Beautiful Person is a 2008 French teen comedy-drama film directed by Christophe Honoré from a screenplay he co-wrote with Gilles Taurand. It is a modernised adaptation of the 1678 French novel La Princesse de Clèves. Honoré was inspired to make the film after then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy repeatedly criticised the book as irrelevant in regard to modern life.
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