P.S.

Laura Linney in a role I have never before seen: sexual. In this 2004 film, she plays the admission officer at the School of Fine Arts at Columbia University, a 39-year-old divorced woman who leads an unfulfilled life and remains friends with her ex-husband.

After processing the current year's admission applications, she finds a letter on the floor of her office as she is about to leave for the day, and is stunned to see its return address: F. Scott Feinstadt, the exact name of her high school sweetheart, who died twenty years back in a car accident. She phones the applicant and makes an appointment to see him the following Monday.

From the quick interview, to which she wore a dress with a very low neckline and revealing lots of chest, she invites him to her apartment and they have sex.

F. Scott is played rather irreverently, and quite well, by Topher Grace. Made me think of Mark Ruffalo.

The script was rather weak, and their two performances lifted the film beyond where that script woul dhave otherwise taken it. A review in Rotten Tomatoes has it about right: P.S. is at its best when it follows the tics and foibles of human behavior; Linney and Grace both give vivid, lively performances. But every time reincarnation rears its head, the movie flounders, particularly in clumsy scenes with Louise's predatory best friend (Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River), who stole Louise's boy so long ago. Fortunately (or strangely), that element is almost a tacked-on subplot; center stage is the romance between Linney and Grace, which glows sweetly. Also featuring Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing) and a woefully underused Paul Rudd (The Shape of Things, Clueless). --Bret Fetzer