Labyrinths of loss: The letter as figure of desire and deferral in the literary film

This paper reframes prevailing discourses around realism and nostalgia in the heritage film through a close look at one particularly rich 'figure' in the film text: letters and letter-writing. By focusing on the figure of the letter in two romantic period dramas - The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993) and Onegin (Martha Fiennes, 1998) - this paper explores the visual rhetoric of the letter in the film text to articulate narratives of desire and deferral. Beyond its cultural and narrative significance, the letter stands for the motif of woman as the 'unreachable/unreadable love object' from which the films derive their emotional impact. However, by inscribing a figure of absence in the visual text the letter also rewrites the familiar realism of period reconstruction with the strangeness of the codes and rituals that enact these fantasy scenarios of desire and loss.