“Dear love of my life, I can’t describe the way I feel. Maybe it’s the gold speckles in your eyes, the way the sun shines when you smile, or the way you manage to make sweatpants and a baggy sweater a daily inspiration outfit; whatever it is, it makes my heart beat for you. However, you’ll never know how my pulse races or how my heart is jumping out of chest when I’m near you, because you’ll never receive this letter.”
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a novel by Jenny Han that recently became an original Netflix movie, one that is gaining the attention of many watchers. The novel is the story of Lara Jean, a junior who has never had a boyfriend or many friends, and her most prized possessions.
There is one thing Lara Jean favors aside from bonding with her sisters and reading romance novels; she imagines that she is her own character in her own story, falling into the arms of her one true love—or into the arms of the 5 boys she liked at one point. Like many teens, Lara Jean has a nonexistence love life that goes only as far as daydreaming about what her relationship with her crushes would be like. To express her powerful emotions, she writes them each a love letter.
Writing a love letter to her crushes is a way to remind Lara Jean that sometimes her emotions can be overwhelming and too powerful, the reason behind why she never mails her letters and continues to live in her fantasy with her nose tucked in her books. At least until one day, her letters are exposed and mailed to each of the boys she loved.
The Netflix movie builds the tension when Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) offers Lara Jean (Lana Condor) the deal of a lifetime: for them to pretend they were dating. Even if Peter was in the deal to make his ex-girlfriend jealous and Lara to convince Josh, her sister’s ex and one of her crushes, that she doesn’t feel the same way about him as she expressed in her letter, the fake-relationship rom-com appeals the audience.
With humoring scenes of an awkward Lara Jean, progress of fake lovers to lovers excellence, and a melodramatic scene between Genevieve (Peter’s ex-girlfriend played by Emilija Baranac) and Lara, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a nearly perfect, engaging display of key messages about self-confidence and family love, satisfaction-feeding for teen romance needs, optimistic film that has gained higher ratings than The Kissing Booth.
