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The bar scene in the Loop where Kate is seen sitting on the barstool, speaking with the woman at the wooden bar, is the real "Millers Pub" located at 134 S Wabash Ave, Chicago, IL 60603. Kate and Alex, by means of handwritten letters placed in that mailbox (and read in back-and-forth voice- over to simulate real-time conversations), fall deeply and achingly in love. Alex is coolly, almost sadistically indifferent to a co-worker (Lynn Collins) who all but throws herself at his feet, while Kate has recently broken up with a perfectly decent but manifestly inadequate fiancé (Dylan Walsh), who keeps showing up no matter what year it is. She also has a gentle mother (Willeke van Ammelrooy) and a wise boss (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who serve as confidantes, while Alex is burdened with an imperious, narcissistic father (Christopher Plummer), a famous architect who designed that strange, impractical house by the lake.
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Alex’s narcissistic father, respected architect Simon Wyler, is hospitalized and dies. Kate finds a book of photos of Simon’s work which hasn't been published in Alex’s time that includes a photo of Simon and Alex as a little boy at the lake house. Not wanting him to wait until it is published, she leaves it for him in the mailbox, hoping it will comfort him. The gesture convinces Alex and Kate that they should try to meet.
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Alex does find Kate in Daley Plaza but stops himself from greeting her having received her letter. The contrivances of the plot, which may require occasional glances at a multiyear date book, are smoothly handled by David Auburn's script and by Mr. Agresti's direction. Visually, "The Lake House" is elegant without being terribly showy, with a connoisseur's eye for Chicago's architectural glories. But the movie is, above all, a showcase for its stars, who seem gratifyingly comfortable in their own skin and delighted to be in each other's company again, in another deeply silly, effortlessly entertaining movie. At the start, Ms. Bullock's character, Kate, a stressed-out physician who has just completed her residency, moves out of the architectural curiosity that gives the picture its title, leaving a note in the mailbox for the next tenant.
Notes
Kate asks Alex to find a copy of Jane Austen's Persuasion that she left at a train station, which he does, and Alex takes Kate on a tour of his favorite architecture in Chicago. Both eventually meet at a birthday party Kate’s then boyfriend, an attorney named Morgan, throws for her. Despite sharing a kiss, Alex does not tell Kate about the letters. "The Lake House," while completely preposterous, is not without charm. The social obstacles that used to exist — in the real world and, more intensely, in Production Code-governed Hollywood — have lost their forbidding power, which may be why supernatural and science fiction touches are required to keep the idea of romantic longing alive. On Valentine’s Day, 2006 for Alex, he recalls Kate’s mentioning Daley Plaza and hurries to the lake house to retrieve their letters.
Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock Are Reunited in 'The Lake House'
Because Ms. Bullock and Mr. Reeves have become such familiar screen presences, their performances turn out, more often than not, to be genuinely surprising. Ms. Bullock likes to be difficult, to temper her radiance with grouchiness, while Mr. Reeves, when the mood strikes, can inflect his mild, baffled affect with meanness, moodiness and even a hint of thorny intelligence. Sandra Bullock is an enormously likable actor in the right role, and so is Keanu Reeves, although here they're both required to be marginally depressed because of events in their current (but not simultaneous) lives. Many of his problems circle around his father, Louis Wyler (Christopher Plummer), a famous Chicago architect. The old man is an egocentric genius who designed the Lake House, which his son dislikes because, like Louis himself, it lives in isolation; there aren't even any stairs to get down to the water. "Not much has changed," Kate writes to him at one point, when he asks what things are like in the future.
Alex makes a reservation at a restaurant two years in advance for him, but the next day for Kate. Heartbroken, Kate ends their relationship and stops visiting the lake house to settle for a future with Morgan. Alex places their letters in a box in the house’s attic, like what Kate described in her first letter, and moves in with his brother Henry, also an architect.
Notes
The mailbox eventually gets into the act by raising and lowering its own little red flag. The two people come to love each other, and this process involves the movie's second impossibility. After filming, the house was required to be removed, and a simple fishing dock was put in its place.[4] The downtown scenes are in The Loop. The scenes where Kate and Morgan go to Henry's office, and Kate's dramatic exit down the stairs, were filmed at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The scene where Henry and Alex talk on the street after being in their father's office was filmed on the 400 block of South Michigan Ave, in front of the Fine Arts Building and the Auditorium Theater. The scene where Kate gets stood-up is in Millennium Park at the Park Grill.
A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside house begins to exchange love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. Read allA lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside house begins to exchange love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late.A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside house begins to exchange love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late. They both leave their letters in the mailbox beside the sidewalk that leads to the bridge that leads to the glass house.
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At the lake house, Kate is distraught with grief that she failed to save Alex and collapses to her knees at the mailbox. In 2006, physician Kate Forster leaves a lake house she has been renting near Chicago and starts a job at a downtown hospital. She leaves a note in the mailbox asking the next tenant to forward her mail and explaining that the painted-on pawprints on the front walkway were there when she moved in as was the box in the attic. It has occasional dark moods and sad moments, but no bad language or sex.
While having lunch in Daley Plaza on Valentine’s Day, 2006, Kate witnesses a man get hit by a car and tries but fails to save him. Depressed, she returns to the lake house and finds Alex’s letter. They regularly trade letters, using the mailbox’s red flag to determine when the other has received their message. Eventually, they learn that they are living two years apart, but can communicate through the mailbox almost instantly.
Meanwhile, Kate and Morgan meet with Henry, who they hired to design a house they bought together. When Kate asks about a drawing of the lake house displayed in Henry’s office, Henry says the artist was his brother, Alex. Kate realizes Henry’s brother is the same Alex she was writing to and asks about him, but Henry explains he died on that day two years earlier. Realizing Alex was the man she failed to save at Daley Plaza, Kate rushes to the lake house herself and writes a frantic message to Alex begging him to wait two years and find her at the lake house.
That would be Mr. Reeves's Alex, a soulful real estate developer who turns out actually to be the previous tenant. Some unexplained wrinkle in the space-time continuum — or a serious glitch at the postal service — has made it possible for Kate, in 2006, to correspond with Alex, who is still making his way through 2004. "The Lake House," a wondrously illogical time-travel romance directed by Alejandro Agresti, is notable mainly for reuniting Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, who together survived a harrowing bus ride in "Speed." That was 12 years ago — how time flies!
The Lake House movie review & film summary (2006) - Roger Ebert
The Lake House movie review & film summary ( .
Posted: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT [source]
His general lack of curiosity — he doesn't ask who won the presidential election or the World Series, or pester her for stock market tips — is in keeping with the fuzziness of the film's conceit. If you approach it with a rational, skeptical mind, "The Lake House" will fall apart almost immediately. You'll just have to accept that a book can travel through the mail to a date earlier than the one printed on its copyright page, and that a fancy Chicago restaurant will hold an unconfirmed reservation for two years.
So while the general public has not, as far as I can tell, been clamoring for a reunion, "The Lake House" nonetheless functions as a fascinating experiment. Is the chemistry — or, given that "Speed" was all about the velocity of bodies in motion, the physics — still there? It is, although in this case the viewer will also have to grapple with a heavy dose of Hollywood metaphysics, which keeps the leads apart for most of the movie. But these two stars have a habit of being more appealing than their material. This is not just a matter of excellent facial bone structure, but also of a sly ability to play simultaneously in and against type.
