Il Mare is the sort of soft, gentle romance that you should watch on a rainy day: it’ll pass the long melancholy hours easily, and make you feel warm and fuzzy instead of bored and grumpy.
It’s a rare example of the “time travel postal romance” genre, although don’t let that put you off. Although this sounds like a classic chick flick, and could be considered that way, I know many blokes who confess to enjoying this one enormously, and even shedding the odd manly tear when the film demands it.
Don’t expect alfoil space suits or steamy snogging in the post office, though. The closest you’ll get to any of that is a bookshop, where our girl works when she’s not exchanging love letters with a man from several years ago. Said girl, for Asian movie aficionados, is Jeon Ji-Hyun, the feisty heroine of My Sassy Girl, whose relatively few film appearances generated a legion of devoted fans in short order.
I can’t promise that this film will change the way you think about anything, but I can promise that anyone who likes gently romantic films will enjoy this. Just make sure you’ve got tissues handy for the weepy bits.