Mark Reviews Movies: BOOK OF LOVE (2022)

Book of Love, Amazon Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 4, 2022

Book of Love begins with a very funny, pretty promising premise that, unfortunately, doesn't last. In retrospect, it probably couldn't have gone on too long without turning one of the movie's protagonists into an absolute dolt. Sometimes, though, good comedy is the worth such a sacrifice.

It's not as if that character is particularly clever and self-aware, anyway. That's the foundation of the joke and, later, the predictable romantic plot of co-writer/director Analeine Cal y Mayor's movie.

He's Henry Copper (Sam Claflin), who spent five years writing a novel that has recently been published. It's an aching story about deep and unspoken love—in his mind, at least.

In reality, the reviews find it boring, and at a reading in a London bookshop, the only attendee stands up and walks away just before Henry finishes the passage. Even his publisher (played by Lucy Punch) can't hide her annoyance with printing such a dud and her inability to remember his surname (Everyone keeps referring to him as "Cooper," and at a certain point, one might forget what the guy's name actually is).

The biggest surprise, which the publisher really can't believe, is that Henry's book is at the top of the best-seller list. It's not the local list, obviously, but the one in Mexico. To keep the sales going, the publishing house has arranged a last-minute book tour for Henry in that country, where he'll be accompanied by Maria Rodríguez (Verónica Echegui), the translator who adapted his novel into Spanish.

All of this is amusing, particularly because Claflin plays the author with a snobbishness that isn't off-putting or egotistical. He's more absent-minded and modest in his beliefs that love and good literature are more about what isn't said, as opposed to things like passion, grand gestures, and sex. Henry arrives in Mexico, with such a complete lack of understanding the language that he doesn't even notice a giant ad promoting his book in the airport. Those with a fundamental knowledge of Spanish will spot it—as well as how the local version of the book has some new, bodice-ripping cover art.

This is a good gag, and it keeps becoming funnier as Henry meets Maria (who has brought along her grandfather, played by Fernando Becerril, and young son Diego, played by Ruy Gaytan, on the cross-country tour), it becomes clearer and clearer that the contents of the book in Mexico aren't what the author wrote, and Maria desperately tries to hide the reality of her—to put it mildly—inaccurate translation. She has turned his book into a sex-filled melodrama.

Alas, the ruse and the clever setup can't last for long, and indeed, just as Cal y Mayor and David Quantick's screenplay finds its comedic rhythm, the gimmick is eliminated from the story. Instead, Henry, Maria, and her family travel across Mexico, as the published writer and the translator who dreams of authoring her own book debate romance (She's cynical on account of personal experience, and he's idealistic and inexperienced) while arguing and occasionally—and increasingly—offering up longing stares in each other's direction. When an English translation of the altered Spanish-language version becomes a hit, Henry's publisher convinces him to stay in Mexico and write a sequel with Maria.

One could suggest that the inevitable romance between these two characters with dissimilar personalities begins as the kind from Henry's novel, with its unrequited nature, and transforms into one more akin to Maria's interpretation, with its more obvious passion and a couple of complications provided by her ex-husband Antonio (Horacio García Rojas). Even with a fan shouting that a climactic confrontation is just like a telenovela, this is probably giving the filmmakers too much credit. The screenplay feels as if it's constantly trying to find a new hook for this story, and none of the resulting ones is as effective as that initial gimmick.

If the characters exist as the means of accomplishing a joke at the start, they never evolve beyond that point once the romance becomes the movie's purpose. It's telling that Henry is more interesting as the butt of a joke and Maria is more engaging as a frantic deceiver than either is as the bland lead in a generic romantic comedy. Because the characters of Book of Love are so shallow, this is never particularly romantic, and as for the comedy, the screenwriters toss aside their one, genuinely funny conceit far too early.

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