The Lake House - A Love Story That Reaches Across Time

“The Lake House is an epic love story,” says Sandra Bullock, who stars as Kate Forster, an independent and rationally-minded doctor who finds herself drawn deeply into an elusive romance that seems to defy all rules of reason and exist in a realm all its own.  “It’s about possibilities and impossibilities and the decisions we make on our way to finding the right person.  It invites you to believe in the impossible and the power of certain connections to challenge any obstacle because you want so much for these two people to find a way.”
It was precisely the film’s unique structure and storyline that attracted Bullock, who refers to it as the allure of “something you know you haven’t seen before.”
Keanu Reeves, who shares the screen with Bullock for the first time since their memorably combustible pairing in Speed, plays Alex to her Kate, and was similarly taken by the story’s unusual premise.  “The way they come together is so original and heartfelt,” he says, noting how The Lake House’s timeless idealism meshes completely with its contemporary setting and characters.  “I’m not the hero here and she’s not the damsel in distress.  It’s not about two people seeking someone or something to make themselves whole; it’s about two people who discover that together they can create something new.”
That they find each other at all is in itself a mystery beyond anything they could have imagined.  Who could explain how she could place a letter into a mailbox in 2006 and he could pick it up on the same day two years earlier?  
They are two people with separate lives talking to each other across an unfathomable two-year divide and yet, in every other way they couldn’t be more perfectly in sync. 
“The letters start with mundane subjects but it doesn’t take long to get to the underlying question of ‘who are you,’ and that becomes the theme.  Who are you?  From there, Alex finds someone with whom he can share all kinds of questions and reveal his innermost self, and she responds in kind,” says Reeves. 
Both he and Bullock feel certain that E-mail or some other medium would not have served the story as well as letters do, with Reeves citing that, “The very act of letter-writing requires that you take the time to collect your thoughts.  It allows you to be your best self, your most intimate and thoughtful.  You have to wait for the other person to receive the letter and then respond so there’s a sense of longing and waiting that concentrates your intention.”
Through letters, says Bullock, Kate and Alex avoid “the superficial song and dance that always happens when people first meet and are trying to present their best side.  Without that, they’re able to be themselves, completely and honestly, bad jokes and bad moods included – silly, angry, wistful, earnest.  Because of the unusual nature of the connection there’s no embarrassment and no fear of sharing all of yourself because there’s a part of you still saying, ‘Well, this doesn’t really exist,’ or ‘Even if it does, I’ll never meet this person so what’s to worry about?’  What makes them fall in love so deeply is the utter fearlessness they have in revealing their vulnerabilities up front.”
Moreover, there’s the feeling of holding in your hands something that someone else has touched, especially when there is so little of the physical realm they are allowed to share.  
As the correspondence between Kate and Alex flourishes, it brings not only romance and spontaneous laughter into their lives but gives them strength and inspiration for issues they’ve both been separately working on and, says Reeves, “I don’t know if they’re consciously preparing themselves for love but they’re changing course in their lives and becoming open to whatever is next.”
Kate has just begun a new job.  She’s traded her country retreat for Chicago, a city whose innate beauty she has yet to recognize, and a small, sterile apartment that quickly closes in on her.   Unwilling to compromise on love, she recently ended a relationship with a man who simply wasn’t “the one,” though she sometimes can’t help wondering if there really is a “one” and how long she is expected to wait for him. 
Meanwhile Alex, a gifted architect, has been squandering his talent on a standard condo development rather than remain at the prestigious design studio run by his famous architect father Simon Wyler, played by internationally acclaimed screen icon Christopher Plummer.
“He’s trying to go beyond things that his father has predetermined for him, in life and in his profession,” offers The Lake House director Alejandro Agresti.  Estranged since the elder Wyler’s increasing fame and arrogance drove away Alex’s beloved mother and damaged the family, father and son still find it difficult to occupy the same room.  Alex has struck out on his own to see if he can make something of himself away from his father’s formidable shadow, even if it means putting his own design dreams on hold.
“They’re in a period of transition,” offers Reeves.   “Kate in 2006 and Alex in 2004 are both in the same place in their lives where they’re waiting for something to happen but they haven’t yet figured out what that is.” 
“They couldn’t have known until they started talking,” says Bullock, “that what they’ve been waiting for is each other.”
The Lake House is based on the original 2000 South Korean film Il Mare, which explores the intriguing concept of a communication across time.  An audience favorite at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, it caught the attention and imagination of producing partners Doug Davison and Roy Lee, founders of Vertigo Entertainment, who subsequently sought to bring its message to a wider audience. 
Says Davison, “It was a love story unlike anything we had ever seen before, unique and complex.  Its theme about the power of love and how it can change a person’s life is what really affected us when we first saw it.  In the three and a half years it took to see this project through to fruition I’ve never stopped being passionate about it.” 
Adds Lee, “it was easy to imagine the whole movie remade with an American cast and set in the United States because the story is absolutely universal and there is nothing in it that makes it uniquely Korean or ties it to any specific culture.”
Davison and Lee selected David Auburn to write the new screenplay, based largely upon the emotional power of his stage play Proof, which won the Pulitzer Prize as well as a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award in its Broadway run and was subsequently adapted for the screen in 2005.   Says Davison, “David’s writing is captivating and he was a wonderful fit for this non-linear, unusual love story.  He delivered an amazing script.”
Likewise, they found in renowned Argentinean director Alejandro Agresti, “The ability to capture an emotional element that is missing from so many films in general.”  Davison and Lee were particularly impressed by Valentin, a poignant and nostalgic coming-of-age tale about a young boy’s dreams of becoming an astronaut, which Agresti wrote and directed, and which received a plethora of international recognition including The Silver Condor from the Argentinean Film Critics Association for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Calf Award for Best Director at the Nederlands Film Festival.  
Although centered upon an ongoing dialogue between two lovers separated by time, in Agresti’s hands The Lake House is significantly visual in its storytelling, allowing viewers, as Bullock explains, “the freedom to interpret and project your own feelings onto the story as it unfolds, more easily than you might if we were constantly telling you what to feel.”  
“I like the way we see the stories unfold, how we learn about these two people,” says Agresti.  “Also, I like how the story plays with time and how these two fall in love while existing in two different times and not being able to meet.  At first they think it’s a game, leaving these letters for each other.  But what seems illogical comes to have its own logic.”
“It captures that instinctive feeling you sometimes get of pieces falling into place,” says Bullock about one of the story’s recurring themes.  “Someone or something might come into your life and just at that moment something seemingly unrelated that happened years ago just clicks and you see how one is connected to the other.  Maybe one thing has to happen in order to bring something else about, but we don’t often see the whole picture.”

Ultimately, she suggests, “It’s not a matter of fate, but of choice.  It’s a choice they make to believe in something worth waiting for, even though everything about it seems impossible.”


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