Independent Films, Film Profiles

Message in a Bottle (film)
by Luis Mandoki

Message in a Bottle is a 1999 romantic drama film directed by Luis Mandoki. Based on a novel with the same name by Nicholas Sparks, the film stars Kevin Costner, Robin Wright Penn, and Paul Newman. Message in a Bottle was filmed in Maine, Chicago, and Wilmington, North Carolina in the United States.Message in a Bottle tells the story of a couple whose love is sparked by a series of three messages in a bottle. Theresa Osborne is a newspaper columnist who goes to Cape Cod and finds a mysterious, intriguing love letter in a bottle in the sand, addressed from Garrett to Catherine. She is fascinated by the letter, and through the help of Deanna, her boss, finds two more letters by the same person, eventually finding Garrett himself. The two meet and fall in love with each other soon afterward.Besides their distance - Garrett lives in North Carolina and Theresa lives in Chicago - there is another problem, Garrett cannot forget Catherine. They visit each other alternately, but Garrett and Theresa feel that they are still not sharing everything with each other.When Garrett later visits Theresa, he finds the letters which Theresa has kept. Garrett returns home by himself, angry at Theresa. One year later, Garrett's father finds Theresa and tells her that Garrett died under the rainstorm in the ocean. There was a bottle with a letter inside his boat. Theresa reads the letter and knows that the letter was written a night before Garrett's last sailing. Garrett apologized to Catherine in the letter and said that in Theresa he had found a new love, a love he must fight for. Unfortunately he's gone with his boat.