*** (out of ****)
Starring Bill Nighy, Hugh Grant & Martine McCutcheon, Colin Firth & Lucia Moniz, Liam Neeson & Thomas Sangster, Alan Rickman & Emma Thompson, Laura Linney & Rodrigo Santoro, Keira Knightley & Andrew Lincoln, Martin Freeman & Joanna Page, Kris Marshall, Heike Makatsch, and Rowan Atkinson
Directed & written by Richard Curtis
2003
124 min R
“Love Actually” tells us what it’s about immediately. In his opening narration, Hugh Grant’s character mentions how the world is not, as many fear, turning into a place filled with hatred and despair. He says that, as far as he knows, no one in the last moments of the Twin Towers made a desperate phone call crying out in hatred and vengeance. All those last calls were to say I love you. As the song goes, “love is all around us.”
And that’s the point “Love Actually” makes, that love is in bloom everywhere, we just have to look. To this end we are treated to nine or ten love stories, running alongside each other, five weeks before Christmas, weaving together and apart throughout London. Some viewers may complain that there are too many characters, couples, and stories to track in a mere two hours; they might say that “Love Actually” would be a stronger movie if it focused on only three or four romances. But that would be missing the point, which is there really is so much love and goodness that we can’t possibly keep track of it all.
“Love Actually” wants to express every possible variation of love: puppy love, long-time love, love at first sight, unrequited love, widowed love, adulterous love, friendly love, parental love, love beyond borders. There’s even an episode that, despite its lack of nudity, can only be described as a pornographic fantasy, stuck in just to be sure that every base is covered.
The movie is the work of writer-director Richard Curtis, who worked as a screenwriter for “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Notting Hill,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” and the BBC shows “Black Adder” and “Mr. Bean.” In his directorial debut, Curtis should be commended for keeping all the plates spinning as well as he does, and for giving everything a steady zip throughout. As sugary as the movie could be, he balances things with playfully dirty jokes and an R rating instead.
Like Athena from Zeus, characters spring from Curtis’s head fully-formed, three-dimensional, completely convincing, and capable of endless deadpan humor. We meet the new British prime minister (yes, Hugh Grant, looking apologetic as always), who is blown away by one of the domestics (Martine McCutcheon) in his new home. We meet a sad-eyed widower (Liam Neeson) who is learning to talk to his eleven-year-old stepson (Thomas Sangster). Then there’s an office manager (Alan Rickman) who, without passion or enthusiasm, is letting himself be seduced by a slinky secretary (Heike Makatsch), perhaps because of his lukewarm feelings toward his wife (Emma Thompson). In his office is a woman (Laura Linney) long in love with a coworker (Rodrigo Santoro) but unwilling to act. Then there’s the young man (Andrew Lincoln) ill at ease about the wedding of his best friend to a beautiful girl (Keira Knightley). And the hack author (Colin Firth, who looks a lot like an Anglicized version of my brother Mark) falling for his Portuguese housemaid (Lucia Moniz). And the desperate wannabe (Kris Marshall) who thinks that if he moves to America his English accent will become his key to sexual ecstasy.
All the stories are good, but the best belongs to Bill Nighy (the father from “I Capture the Castle") playing a way, way over-the-hill rock star trying for a comeback with a revamped Christmas song. The song is absolute crap, and he knows it, and let’s everyone else know it in one hilarious scene after another. He is a sad wreck of a defeated man, yet in the five weeks before Christmas he lifts the office of has-been to operatic heights, swearing on television, shaking his head over his wasted life, and unapologetically living out every rock ‘n roll dream of bimbos, drugs, and anti-social behavior. Everything he does is a kind of travesty—from his bombshell back-up singers in Santa suits to his advice to kids to not buy drugs when they can become rock stars and get them for free—but he does it all with an undertone of sarcasm that gradually wins over the public.
And as the prime minister—I can’t imagine anyone more British than Hugh Grant. He’s so refined, handsome, and awkward. I like him the more I see him, the more I watch him say and do everything, no matter how obscene or poetic, with his patented combination of embarrassment and effortlessness. He has a big scene in which he faces off with the American President (a terrific cameo that I won’t spoil), which may seem out-of-place at first in a romantic comedy, until we realize that his definition of a relationship free of bullying applies to romance as well as international policy.
There isn’t enough space to list all the various couples and their longings, or to speculate on how each story connects to one another (my wife and I aren’t even sure if they all do). Their romances are not about why two people are right for each other, but only that they are in love, and love will drive them. Every romance is built on some age-old convention, but there are no stupid misunderstandings or contrivances. Everyone tries, for a while, to deny their feelings, to pretend that love is unwise. But this passes. The movie is packed with sighs of longing and broken hearts, of men and women running to last-ditch efforts to win someone’s heart, of loud proclamations of love in public places. Virtually every story ends with a Huge Romantic Gesture and, by the end, we’re not sure how many more build-ups, payoffs, kisses, and cymbal crashes we can take. “Love Actually” is like getting a big chunk of chocolate for Christmas: there may be a little too much of it, and it might be sweeter than we need, but it tastes so good.
Finished November 27, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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