Dead Letter Office

This film is a wonderfully simplistic work. Enjoyable from start to end it is both sad yet uplifting at the same time. The performances from Miranda Otto (oh, how she deserves so much more recognition!)and George del Hoya are beautiful and yet almost painful to watch, as the two tortured souls come to understand each other. The supporting cast of workers at the Dead Letter Office are wonderful bit-parts in them selves, as is Alice's long-suffering boyfriend, who I couldn't help but feel slightly sorry for. There's one particular scene I could watch over and over (and I have!), it's such a shame that films like these don't get recognition, and therefore bring them futher into the public eye for more people to enjoy. I cried, I laughed and I sighed. I'd recommend this film to anyone.

This little gem of a film tells a heart warming, bitter-sweet tale with classy acting and low-key direction. Lonely Alice takes a job at the dead letter office in order to track down the father with whom she lost contact in childhood. There she meets the apparently cold but super efficient manager, Franc, a refugee with a past which torments him. The basic story then progresses along lines you would expect with some nice twists and turns along the way. Alice and Franc grow to understand each other, while facing up to the realities of their previous experiences, and the realization that the past is impossible to recapture. Miranda Otto as Alice lifts this film out of the ordinary with a charming, sincere performance, a very pretty face and a dab of genuine star quality . George Del Hoyo as the tortured soul, Franc, is an effective polar opposite to Alice. He's cold and apparently cynical, Alice is wide-eyed and enthusiastic but both share a loss in their past. The supporting characters at the dead letter office itself , in which undeliverable and wrongly addressed mail is processed, are a curious bunch of misfits who add some comic touches and depth. The straight forward and un-flashy direction is effective in making the whole movie seem down to earth and realistic. A case of less being more. There are some fine memorable scenes ; Alice posting a letter to her missing father while striking a graceful balletic pose ; Frank practicing dance steps after hours in the office. Not high art, but quality no nonsense film making in which the story and characters lead the way and the director supports, rather than usurps them. A nice film and please can someone in Hollywood sign Miranda Otto as I could watch her all day!

Dead Letter Office is the kind of film you discover, late one night, on TV, and happily get drawn into it. Some other reviewer described it as warm and fuzzy. Come on! It's unique, it's temperate, not really warm, and so much concerned with loss and the need for compassion that fuzzy doesn't apply either.

The excellent Miranda Otto, best know internationally for Peter Jackson's LotR, plays Alice, a directionless twentysomething in Melbourne. She takes a job at the Dead Letter Office, hoping to use her new skills to track down her long lost father. The team is small, two women, three men, all rather distinct, maybe a bit lost themselves. Oh, and one homing pigeon. Alice slowly develops a rapport with an immigrant from Chile, Frank (George. DelHoyo), the department's boss. As her efforts to find her father loss their impetus her connection to Frank continues to grow, but are they simply too different, worlds apart, to really fall for each other?

A beautifully understated film of deep poignancy, and one that shows a different image of Australia from the clichés we all know. One of those small gems that one comes back to, from time to time, with undiminished satisfaction. As Hollywood wastes hundreds of millions of dollars per film, making worthless superhero codswallop that even the youngest generation is sick of, maybe the Yanks ought to study the smaller productions if only to rediscover everyday humanity, human stories, ones that invite understanding rather than fuelling righteous indignation and division?

Strongly recommended.

An unpretentious little film made with sincerity, gentleness and with a reduced budget (and it shows.) In the end, it looks and feels mostly undernourished. The Latin-American characters that give the movie its rather unusual "exotic" flavour also collaborate with the collective tortured past that runs through the movie, although their personal stories and discourse may sound pretty unconvincing.

This movie had a IMDB rating of 8.1 so I expected much more from it. It starts out funny and endearing with an energy that feels spontaneous. But before the movie is half-way through, it begins to drag and everything becomes sickingly predictable. The characters in the office were delightful in the first third of the movie, but we get to know them a little too well; they become caricatures, not real people at all. This is the same story I've seen hundreds of times, only told here with slightly different circumstances. The thing is, I could stomach another predictable love story if only the dialog weren't so stale!

The only thing that could be worse is if the characters had inconsistent and unbelievable motivations, and unfortunately that was also the case with Dead Letter Office. Hopefully this movie will end up in the Dead Movie Office soon.