Dead Letter Office

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Dead Letter Office

• Revision and Review

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Production Details

• Screenwriter Deb Cox
• Director of Photography Ellery Ryan
• Music Roger Mason
• Cast Miranda Otto, George DelHoyo, Syd Brisbane,
  Georgina Naidu, Nicholas Bell, Vanessa Steele,
  Jane Hall, Mark Willson
• Running time 95 min.
• Production Southern Star Film

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Awards

• AWGIE (Australian Writers Guild) Best Original
  Film Script 1998
• Nominated for Best Achievement in Production
  Design and Best Original Screenplay - 1998
  Australian Film Institute Awards

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Plot Summary

• Alice's girlhood dreams of her absent father are
  twisted into a bundle of letters, returned
  unopened, and stamped Dead Letter Office.
• Since her lonely childhood, Alice (Miranda Otto,
  star of Doing Time for Patsy Cline) has been
  writing to her deadbeat and long-since-vanished
  father.
• Getting a job at the Dead Letter Office is her
  last ditch effort to find her father
• Alice, an insecure and impetuous young woman,
  begins a search for her long-absent father
• She discovers 
• an extended family of oddballs,
• love in the person of equally lonely Chilean
  political refugee Frank (George DelHoyo)
• her missing dad (a cameo by Barry Otto, Miranda's
  father).
• Frank is the manager of this forgotten corner of
  a careless world, presiding calmly over an
  eccentric bunch of fellow workers and a pigeon
  who can't find his way home.
• The idea of ordinary people, postal workers,
  reading private correspondence fascinated me,"
  said writer Deb Cox. "Those writers thought they
  were sending words into the ether, but instead
  they landed on the desk of a man like Frank and
  he became part of their small tragedies."
•  A light comedy with substantial emotional depth.

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The Title Definitions

• E. Cobham Brewer 18101897. Dictionary of Phrase
  and Fable. 1898.
• Dead-letter Office (The). A department in the
  post-office where unclaimed letters are kept.
• Dead Letter A written document of no value a
  law no longer acted upon. Also a letter which
  lies buried in the post-office because the
  address is incorrect, or the person addressed
  cannot be found.

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Setting Strange Place to Find Love?

• Dead Letter Office Characterization
• A repository for thousands of fading dreams
• Correspondence dislocated from its intended
  destination
• A forgotten corner of a careless world
• Dead-end in life - cul de sac
• Parallels
• Franks Life
• Alices Life
• The Dead Letter Office
• The Pigeon

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Similarities and Differences

• Questions
• What is it that Frank and Alice share in common?
• What is it that Frank has that Alice does not
  have? And Alice have that Frank does not have?
• What brings them together?
• What in their lives allows them to help each
  other?
• Their Dreams and Their Destinations
• The Beginning of the film
• The End of the film
• Irony The Dead Letter Office is indeed a strange
  place to find love