An Ode to Rewatching You've Got Mail

We all have that one film we rewatch a thousand times. We know it by heart, and each subsequent rewatch is a ritual and a comfort at the same time. Sometimes we have a slew of such films, each one playing a different role in our lives, communicating a different mood or feeling, connected to its own distinct memory and making us feel better in different ways. Sometimes we sit and rewatch the film attentively. Sometimes we have it on in the background as we do other things. Either way, it plays an important role in our lives and even in our cultural personalities. 

“Each subsequent rewatch is a ritual and a comfort at the same time.”

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I have a few such films, but the most important one, the one that seems to embody my personality more than any other is You’ve Got Mail. That should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who reads The Attic on Eighth. Our love for Nora Ephron is no secret, and we’ve hardly kept the You’ve Got Mail references and recommendations in our back pockets through the years – mentioning it at every opportunity and presenting you all with bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils to launch our first autumn at the Attic. 

You’ve Got Mail is a very 1990s retelling of a string of retellings originally stemming from the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie – though better known perhaps as the 1940 film, The Shop Around the Corner or the 1963 Broadway musical, She Loves Me. It tells the story of two people in the New York book world who fall in love via email correspondence without realizing that they are very direct business rivals in real life. Kathleen Kelly, played by Meg Ryan, runs a beautiful, charming independent children’s bookshop on the Upper West Side that she inherited from her mother, and Joe Fox, played by Tom Hanks, is the third generation of Fox & Sons, a bookshop giant akin to Borders, Barnes & Noble, or Waterstones, who is opening a Fox Books just around the corner from Kelly’s bookshop. It’s a romantic comedy that feels custom-made for the bookish crowd, and given that it was written by Nora Ephron and her sister, Delia Ephron, it probably is. 

“It’s a romantic comedy that feels custom-made for the bookish crowd.”

What is it though that makes You’ve Got Mail so rewatchable? I took part in my annual rewatch last night, taking advantage of the fact that my husband – who smartly waited until after we were married to tell me that he doesn’t like the film – was out for the night. My love of the film is one that’s both amused and annoyed my family through the years. The first time I ever watched it was with my mother the year it came out, having excitedly rented the film from Blockbuster while my mom was sick in bed with the flu. It was October 1999, I was 8 years old, and for the first time ever, a film for grown ups spoke to me. It was magic. I loved books. I understood most of the references. It was cozy. It made me feel all of the feels. And it made use of my favorite thing about the internet at the time – I received my first computer earlier that year and was very fond of logging on to AOL to check my email. Who knew such magic could come from it?? I promptly prepped my “what I did on autumn holiday” presentation for the following week to be all about the film.

“In an unstable world where you never know what’s going to come next, there’s something wonderfully cozy about finding only the known in your favorite piece of media.”

My love for You’ve Got Mail has only grown through the years. I rewatched it regularly as a teenager, being one of the first DVDs my mom bought after moving to Europe shortly after. The copy of the DVD that I still own has the title written in three languages on the disk, and a Czech price sticker on the back. My mom quickly got tired of my rewatches. Why do you want to keep rewatching something you know so well?

Kathleen Kelly’s UWS apartment

Well, comfort for one. In an unstable world where you never know what’s going to come next, there’s something wonderfully cozy about finding only the known in your favorite piece of media. It’s why we as a people love retellings so much – the familiarity is a human warmth in a cold world. It’s why, for instance, I’ve rewatched Pride & Prejudice so many times (both the miniseries and the 2005 film, thank you very much), why I’ve reread the book so many times, and why I will never say no to a Jane Austen retelling.

And that’s something You’ve Got Mail gets because not only is it good, but even it places Pride and Prejudice somewhere near its center. Very near even because arguably, the plot of the film itself is a Pride and Prejudice retelling – first impressions, misunderstandings, different financial backgrounds, hatred turning into love, etc. But that’s a whole other essay. More importantly here, Pride and Prejudice is Kathleen Kelly’s favorite novel. She rereads it. She implores Joe Fox to read it, which he, in an attempt to further connect with her, does! She brings it with her on her blind date to identify herself, complete with a rose stuck in between its pages. She understands the appeal and the romance of a favorite story. “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does,” she says in the film and it’s something she knows very well.

What she doesn’t say is that the same can be said of films. You’ve Got Mail may not have been a book I read as a child, but it was a film I watched as one, a film I loved as one, and so it’s become an integral part of my cultural identity. I first watched it in October, and now it’s a film I rewatch every autumn. If I don’t, it’s akin to not eating a single apple or buying a single pumpkin at the market in the entirety of autumn. Never once stepping on a crunchy leaf or taking pleasure in splashing through at least one puddle, no matter how old you are. It’s a ritual in itself. And it’s one that has that strength because it’s been with me for so long. My husband, as I said, doesn’t share my love for the film – he saw it for the first time in his twenties when I sat him down to watch it, and instead of seeing the magic, he just saw a film and focused maybe a little too long on the fact that Joe Fox hides who he is from Kathleen Kelly for a good part of the film. Consequently, he doesn’t love it. And that’s fine. That’s life.

“You’ve Got Mail may not have been a book I read as a child, but it was a film I watched as one, a film I loved as one, and so it’s become an integral part of my cultural identity.”

bookish 1990s fashion in its prime

For me though, as the years have gone by and I’ve gone from being an enchanted 8 year old in 1999 to displaced teenager to a nostalgic adult in 2019, You’ve Got Mail has become a window into my childhood. It spoke to me back then because everything about it felt familiar, but it speaks to me now not just because I love the story it tells but because it captures the world that I knew. The clothes – the sweaters, the jumpers. The foods. The attitudes. The morning trips to 90s Starbucks (a different thing in itself, I promise you that – and yes, I was already a Starbucks regular back then). The 90s city life. The 90s visits to New York in the fall. The bookshops. The story hours. The bagels. The enthusiasm for sushi. Even the cringe-y performances of Annie as the only little girl in a roomful of adults. 

And so, I sit down to watch it every autumn, whether I’m sitting down with a glass of wine and a plate of pasta gratinée or curling up with a blanket and a cup of tea. I watch it raptly. I cry when music by The Cranberries starts to play in the exposition. I let the familiar scenes and lines wash over me. I lust after Kathleen Kelly’s perfect brownstone apartment. I take in all the outfits and thank all my lucky stars that miniskirts and sweaters are a combination that will never go out of style (my favorite, my trademark). I consider sharpening a whole new bouquet of pencils. And I thus welcome in the autumn season and another year of embracing the romantic familiarities in my life. 

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Olivia Gündüz-Willemin is Editor-in-Chief of The Attic on Eighth. She is dedicated to reading her way through the world and trying to stay as calm as possible.