Women of Letters

The first time I saw Letter from an Unknown Woman, I admired its craft and atmosphere but hated the story, about a woman who wastes her life in abject devotion to an unworthy man. A decade later I saw the film again, and found it as different as the heroine finds her beloved after ten years. Now it was not a tale of unrequited love, but a devastating anatomy of the illusions that lie at the heart of romance and even at the heart of our identities. The self-sacrificing woman and the self-absorbed cad both throw their lives away on false ideals, but their lives still have weight and beauty—so even do their ideals.