Although Michael Radford directed this small, touching film about a shy mail carrier looking for love, the guiding spirit seems to have been writer/actor Massimo Troisi, who died shortly after shooting was completed. Troisi plays a simple, middle-aged man who lives on a small island in the Mediterranean also inhabited by noted Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Upon learning that the poet receives a number of letters from women, and is said to have a way with them, he decides to solicit the help of the great man for advice on winning the woman Maria Grazia Cucinotta he loves. The film is as much about the romance of language as of lovers, and as much about the postman's gentle seduction of the initially distant poet as it is about his courtship of the woman. Troisi shines in his final role, his gauntly lyrical presence lingering in the memory long after the film ends. The great Philippe Noiret, the eternal everyman of French films, might have seemed a strange choice for the role of Neruda, but he is as brilliant as ever. A small film it may be, but its poetry is winning.