Katie Parker | The Letter / 2024

without answers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Katie Parker (screenwriter and director) The Letter / 2024 [7 minutes]

 

This short British film would be perfectly matched to the earlier Ellie Rogers 2019 film, both being sapphic love letters (the earlier only metaphorically) to a lover who disappeared.

    In The Letter, after years earlier reading Anna’s (Jessica Armstrong) goodbye note, her former lover Jodie (Hannah Kidman) meets up with her again on the park bench where they often met.

    Jodie attempts to discover what she might have done to prevent Anna from “leaving,” and is told that it had nothing to do with her, that too much had happened too quickly for Anna to accept it, and that she did not mean at all to hurt her friend, but simply had to withdraw.

    We quickly perceive that the Anna who Jodie is querying about what could have prevented her “leaving,” is a memory, a ghost of the former Anna who has committed suicide. Jodie has written her own love letter and goodbye note to the dead girl, repeating her love for her and wondering if she had only remembered to kiss her as she left the house on the day it happened, would it have made any difference?

     But Anna is now a fantasy, whose death has made Jodie’s world stop, crushing her with pain and guilt in a way that the dead girl cannot even imagine. 

   Yet, in her visit to the bench, now with a plaque in memory of Anna Sherman (1991-2023) does appear somewhat to resolve her suffering even while resulting in yet more tears for her lover’s demise.

     This short film, although poignant, is perhaps simply too vague to permit us to fully share, however, in Jodie’s sorrow or to even fully comprehend it. How long did they live together, when did they meet and how? What was the nature of their relationship? Were they openly a couple or still closeted? Just a few of those vital pieces of information might have fleshed out the relationship that is simply reported as if the simple fact that they were lovers were all that mattered.

     A relationship is far more than a fact, and we are provided with none of the essence of the real behind the two letters and that little golden plaque. Of course, when such things happen, the survivor often feels precisely that empty, groping for details that might explain the loss. The reality behind the dead individual’s life is suddenly perceived as a void which no explanation can fill. Even love letters, her companion’s assurances that it was not something the other did can resolve the puzzle of how the private self of the other determined to exit the precious fullness of life. Such self-murders will always be perceived as a selfish act, no matter how giving and full of life the missing person might have seemed to be, for they carry the secret of their fear and abandonment with them into their graves.

 

Los Angeles, October 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).