84 Charing Cross Road [DVD] [2002]

Description

Product Description A story about love and the love of books, 84 Charing Cross Road features Academy Award(r) winners Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins in stellar performances. Helen Hanff (Bancroft), a feisty New York writer, mails a letter to a small London bookshop requesting some rare English classics. Frank Doel (Hopkins), the reserved English bookseller, answers her request, beginning a touching and humorous correspondence that spans two continents and two decades. Hanff's aloof British demeanor, but their mutual love of books forms a bond that deepens with each passing year. Their intimate, richly detailed letters draw us into their lives as Helen and Frank share theirdreams, hopes, sorrows and joys - and, in doing so, develop a lasting and extraordinary friendship. .co.uk Review Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft) and Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins) are lifelong friends who never meet in 84 Charing Cross Road, a unique comedy-drama based on a true story. Hanff and Doel are separated by 3,000 miles of ocean and joined by a passion for old books. Their relationship begins when New- Yorker Hanff orders a copy of Pepys' diary. Doel, as polite and soft-spoken as Hanff is loud and overbearing, fields the request from the titular book shop in London. For the next two decades they correspond without ever actually sitting down for tea and crumpets. Director David Jones (Betrayal) does a reasonably good job of goosing a movie about something as un-cinematic as letter-writing, and the stars have fun chewing scenery on both sides of the Atlantic. The model for this kind of bittersweet relationship is David Lean's Brief Encounter, which, not coincidentally, is glimpsed here when Hanff steps out for a rainy-day matinee. --Glenn Lovell, .com