P.S.

P.S. marks Dylan Kidd’s follow-up to the acclaimed Roger Dodger, and not surprisingly, the film can’t easily be classified. On the surface, it’s a romance between an older woman named Louise (played by Laura Linney) and F. Scott (Topher Grace), who is almost two decades younger. But Kidd isn’t content to allow this to play out as a typical May-December story, and his screenplay has a lot to say about loftier issues such as aging and even the meaning of life. Admittedly, the story is hurt by a bizarre plot device – Louise becomes convinced that F. Scott is her dead lover reincarnated – that doesn’t really go anywhere, and seems to exist only to initially bring Louise and F. Scott together. But once you get past that element of Kidd’s screenplay (based on the novel by Helen Schulman), there’s certainly a lot here worth embracing – particularly Linney’s performance, which is incredibly strong (though not entirely surprising, given how effective she’s been in films like You Can Count On Me and Mystic River). Grace, on the other hand, sheds all traces of his sitcom persona and proves that he’s got what it takes to become a bona fide movie star.

**1/2 out of ****