The thesis put forth by writer-director Dylan Kidd (“Roger Dodger”) in his wistful, somewhat torpid romantic drama “P.S.” is that absent any material obstacles to love, human beings intrinsically will create some. Such is the case with Louise Harrington, a 39-year-old admissions officer at Columbia University’s School of Fine Arts. Delicately portrayed by the gifted Laura Linney, Louise seemingly possesses the pieces to build a happy life, yet she cannot put them together. Mired in a sexless co-dependent relationship with her ex-husband Peter (Gabriel Byrne), she watches young lovers nuzzle from her office window and longs for a passion that died long ago with a boyfriend named Scott Feinstadt who was killed in a car accident. Then one day a grad school application comes across her desk from one F. Scott Feinstadt (Topher Grace), a 24-year-old painter who turns out to be a live ringer for her dead ex. F. Scott walks, talks, paints and screws like his namesake, presumably for the purpose of literally allowing Louise to make the same mistakes all over again. Grace proves he’s ready to graduate from “That 70s Show” to 21st century movie stardom with a performance that combines youthful exuberance with “old soul’ sensibility that suggests maybe there’s really something to this reincarnation business. Still, credulity is stretched to the limits, and despite the solid work from an excellent cast the film fails to fully engage us. The relationship between Linney and Grace’s characters isn’t developed beyond that of student-mentor or spinster-boy-toy, and there’s an almost irritating avoidance of one of the film’s central questions: Why has Louise been locked into place for so long? Without that knowledge, the dubious doppelganger device doesn’t wash.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 15, 2004. Read the original PDF.