Taglines: What if you found the one you were meant for… but you lived 2 years apart?
Kate Forster is moving out from her lake house, built all of it with glass. She is a doctor and has just begin to work in a hospital in Chicago, moving to a new flat in the center of the city. Alex Wyler is the new owner of the lake house, a young architect who’s working in the construction of a new complex of houses at the city skirts.
Alex and Kate are maintaining a correspondence, talking about the house matters, sending each other letters, which are put in the lake house’s letter box. But a strange thing is happening, because both of them find out that the letter box is working as a kind of time communication channel, between the year 2004, where Alex’s living, and 2006, the year that Kate’s actually living.
After sending each other many letters talking about their lives, and Kate talking to Alex about how life will be in two years, it seems like they’re falling in love each other. But maybe they will never meet each other, because of the time distance. Nevertheless, Kate comes up with a memory from 2004, when she forgot a book in a train station, Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”, and she’ll ask Alex to go to that place in that precise moment, when she lost the book.
The Lake House is a 2006 American romantic drama directed by Alejandro Agresti and starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock and Christopher Plummer. It was written by David Auburn. The film is a remake of the South Korean motion picture Il Mare (2000). The story centers on an architect living in 2004 and a doctor living in 2006. The two meet via letters left in a mailbox at the lake house they have both lived in at separate points in time; they carry on correspondence over two years, remaining separated by their original difference of two years.
About the Production
“The Lake House is an epic love story,” says Sandra Bullock, who stars as Kate Forster, an independent and rationally-minded doctor who finds herself drawn deeply into an elusive romance that seems to defy all rules of reason and exist in a realm all its own. “It’s about possibilities and impossibilities and the decisions we make on our way to finding the right person. It invites you to believe in the impossible and the power of certain connections to challenge any obstacle because you want so much for these two people to find a way.” It was precisely the film’s unique structure and storyline that attracted Bullock, who refers to it as the allure of “something you know you haven’t seen before.”
Keanu Reeves, who shares the screen with Bullock for the first time since their memorably combustible pairing in Speed, plays Alex to her Kate, and was similarly taken by the story’s unusual premise. “The way they come together is so original and heartfelt,” he says, noting how The Lake House’s timeless idealism meshes completely with its contemporary setting and characters. “I’m not the hero here and she’s not the damsel in distress. It’s not about two people seeking someone or something to make themselves whole; it’s about two people who discover that together they can create something new.”
That they find each other at all is in itself a mystery beyond anything they could have imagined. Who could explain how she could place a letter into a mailbox in 2006 and he could pick it up on the same day two years earlier?
They are two people with separate lives talking to each other across an unfathomable two-year divide and yet, in every other way they couldn’t be more perfectly in sync. “The letters start with mundane subjects but it doesn’t take long to get to the underlying question of ‘who are you,’ and that becomes the theme. Who are you? From there, Alex finds someone with whom he can share all kinds of questions and reveal his innermost self, and she responds in kind,” says Reeves.
Both he and Bullock feel certain that E-mail or some other medium would not have served the story as well as letters do, with Reeves citing that, “The very act of letter-writing requires that you take the time to collect your thoughts. It allows you to be your best self, your most intimate and thoughtful. You have to wait for the other person to receive the letter and then respond so there’s a sense of longing and waiting that concentrates your intention.”
Through letters, says Bullock, Kate and Alex avoid “the superficial song and dance that always happens when people first meet and are trying to present their best side. Without that, they’re able to be themselves, completely and honestly, bad jokes and bad moods included – silly, angry, wistful, earnest. Because of the unusual nature of the connection there’s no embarrassment and no fear of sharing all of yourself because there’s a part of you still saying, ‘Well, this doesn’t really exist,’ or ‘Even if it does, I’ll never meet this person so what’s to worry about?’ What makes them fall in love so deeply is the utter fearlessness they have in revealing their vulnerabilities up front.”
Moreover, there’s the feeling of holding in your hands something that someone else has touched, especially when there is so little of the physical realm they are allowed to share. As the correspondence between Kate and Alex flourishes, it brings not only romance and spontaneous laughter into their lives but gives them strength and inspiration for issues they’ve both been separately working on and, says Reeves, “I don’t know if they’re consciously preparing themselves for love but they’re changing course in their lives and becoming open to whatever is next.”
Kate has just begun a new job. She’s traded her country retreat for Chicago, a city whose innate beauty she has yet to recognize, and a small, sterile apartment that quickly closes in on her. Unwilling to compromise on love, she recently ended a relationship with a man who simply wasn’t “the one,” though she sometimes can’t help wondering if there really is a “one” and how long she is expected to wait for him.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
The Lake House (2006)
Directed by: Alejandro Agresti
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Ebon-Moss Bachrach, Christopher Plummer, Lynn Collins, Mike Bacarella, Willeke van Ammelrooy, Jennifer Clark
Screenplay by: David Auburn
Production Design by: Nathan Crowley
Cinematography by: Alar Kivilo
Film Editing by: Alejandro Brodersohn, Lynzee Klingman
Costume Design by: Deena Appel
Set Decoration by: Meg Everist
Art Direction by: Kevin Kavanaugh, Tomas Voth, Shane Valentino
Music by: Rachel Portman, Paul M. van Brugge
MPAA Rating: PG for some language and a disturbing image.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: June 16, 2006
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