The great Vanessa Redgrave, an actress not normally associated with romantic comedies, lends heft to Gary Winick’s “Letters to Juliet,” which had its world premiere Sunday night at the Tribeca Film Festival. It will be released on May 14 by Summit.

The ubiquitous Amanda Seyfried plays a fact-checker for the New Yorker who goes on a “pre-Honeymoon” with a restrateur fiancee (Gael Garcia Bernal). When he turns it into a working vacation while in Vernona, she smells a story in a real-life organization that answers letters left by women with romantic problems for Shakespeare’s heroine.

Unearthing an unanswered letter from 1957, Seyfried recommends that the woman belated pursue the love she abandoned as a teenager. She turns up in the person of Redgrave, accompanied by a priggish lawyer grandson (Christopher Egan) who’s cynical about love.

It’s not hard to figure out where things go from there. The main attraction in this cute comedy, besides lots of Italian scenery, is Redgrave, who lends great poignance to her character’s Quixotic pursuit.

Without giving anything away, the cast includes Redgrave’s charming husband (since 2006), Italian-born Franco Nero, making his first major appearance in an American film in years.

The couple met on “Camelot” (1967) — she was Guinevere and she was Lancelot — and had a son who directed both of them in one of several European movies they have appeared in together. This wonderful still of them below is from the 1969 Italian film “A Quiet Place in the Country.”