Original Review by Alan Rogers
The 2014 film Love In The Post, directed by Joanna Callaghan, is inspired by the book The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The book (published in 1980) is divided into two halves, and first half contains a series of love letters by Derrida. In one of these letters he recounts the experience of seeing a card reproduction of a medieval depiction of Socrates taking dictation from Plato. The philosopher speculates on what Plato may be doing behind Socrates’ back, leading Derrida to wonder: “…imagine the day, when we will be able to send sperm by post card.” As with the book, which combines elements of fact and fiction, Callaghan’s film combines the stories of a professor of literature (an authority on Derrida and whose university department is about to be closed), a film director trying to complete a film about The Post Card and filmed extracts from interviews with real-life scholars of Derrida.. For the film’s protagonists, a series of letters act as a catalyst to events that will change everyone’s lives.
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