‘Letters to Juliet’ takes audience to Tuscany

Movie: "Letters to Juliet"

When: Opening Friday at local theaters

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Egan, Gabriel Garcia Bernal, Franco Nero

Director: Gary Winick

The story: An American vacationing in Verona, Italy, finds an unanswered "letter to Juliet" and replies -- 50 years later, launching a British widow's search for her lost, long-ago love, who's presumably somewhere in Tuscany.

The buzz: "Dear John's" Amanda Seyfried keeps on reading, and writing, letters in a romantic comedy that teams her with the legendary Redgrave -- whose son-in-law, Liam Neeson, was Seyfried's "Chloe" co-star. But Redgrave's even closer to another co-star: Nero, who played Lancelot to her Guenevere in 1967's "Camelot," with whom she had a son, Carlo. After a 36-year separation, Redgrave and Nero reunited -- and married -- in 2006. "Letters to Juliet's" Italian setting also represents a homecoming for screenwriter Tim Sullivan, whose credits include an adaptation of E.M. Forster's "Where Angels Fear to Tread," which also takes place in Tuscany.