Elevator Love Letter (2003) – Stars

Frigidity gets an audit in “Elevator Love Letter,” the avowal of a fashionably aloof career woman who flourishes in the boardroom and founders in the bedroom. Amy Millan is a girl unattainable behind a facade of ambition and achievement, who keeps confidants and would-be suitors at bay with a temperament that lies somewhere between the irksome neurosis of Ally McBeal and the off-putting Oscar Wilde-isms of Ling Woo. Isolated by the aftereffects of her corporate ascent, she still secretly yearns for intimacy. To that end, Millan’s voice has never sounded sweeter as it glides leniently, smooth as honey, yet tempered by the burden of a weary detachment. To assist her, Evan Cranley devises a lolloping bassline that fits so perfectly in the pocket, lingering on the root before joining the guitar through the chord progression, that its dynamic allure magnetizes the soul to do its bidding. Torquil Campbell is the aspirant from accounting come to deliver her from the ivory tower of a downtown high-rise. Although he realizes she’s out of his league, he’ll be dusting off the John Hughes-inspired lines tonight, hoping to charm her inner Molly Ringwald. Perhaps she capitulates in a moment of weakness, only to return to the environment that obscures her apathy beneath the humming of printers, copiers and fax machines, illuminates her loneliness in the radiation of a computer monitor.

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