The sweet Christmas comforts of Love Actually
Love Actually
By Jeremy Arblaster
For most people, Love Actually has somewhat begrudgingly nestled into its inevitable slot amongst our festive favourites. Almost sickly sweet with ‘love’, Richard Curtis’s rom-com, set in the run-up to Christmas, is a pick n’ mix of short romantic interludes that are all loosely connected and all about love. Sort of like Pulp Fiction but with less blood, fewer cheeseburgers and more Mr. Bean.
Initially intended to be two films, and partially inspired by Tarantino’s cult-classic, it was eventually cut down to one manageable portion – though that depends on your stomach – and thrown up out before Christmas 2003 shortly after Concorde’s last ever flight, and just before they found Saddam Hussein.
It was supposed to represent love in all its wonderful forms. A chocolate box of mismatches- all shapes, colours and sizes. Well ok, maybe not shapes – with Martine McCutcheon being unkindly labelled fat as an ongoing joke – or colours – Love Actually is unsurprisingly very white.
And if it is supposed to be all about that enigmatic feeling we all chase, then there’s an alarming focus on a ‘you just know’ theory that runs through the centre of the film like the thick splodge of cream on an éclair. Very few of these characters seemed to have talked to one another.
But there is an adorable chaos to these random love matches, some more charming than others. Andrew Lincoln is besotted with his best friend’s beautiful wife Keira Knightley, filming her exclusively at her own wedding and showing up on her doorstep back when this was considered romantic and not a criminal offence. Martin Freeman and Joanna Page make very British small-talk as stand-in nudes on a film set.
Others slightly less believable as Heike Makatsch inexplicably chases after her hangdog boss, who’s marriage to Emma Thompson seems to have lost its lustre. Elsewhere Colin Firth plays a charming but heartbroken British gent chasing after his Portuguese housekeeper.
Even the Prime Minister of Britain is getting in on the action, Hugh Grant perfect as a bumbling buffoon of a PM on the road to making Britain great again, who gets caught up with his secretary Martine McCutcheon. And if that doesn’t sound surprisingly prescient, then how about the US President who gets a bit ‘handsy’? A great, smarmy cameo by Billy Bob-Thornton.
Despite being made up of a web of romantic relationships, it’s simple stuff.
This is signified early on when Liam Neeson, racked with the grief of losing his wife- learns his son isn’t sad...he’s in love! Thank God we don’t have to deal with the trauma of loss, and instead he can drum his way into the heart of his school crush and chase her through surprisingly lax post-9/11 security. Though I suppose the child being shot on sight by overzealous airport police would probably ruin the illusion that love conquers all
Still, it’s nice to see that the British public could - in theory- once get behind a young British boy falling for a black American girl- even if this proved incorrect in practise.
By the time the credits roll to the inspired use of God Only Knows by the Beach Boys alongside a video montage of airport reunions, the overall message that love conquers all has been sufficiently hammered home. And though not all of these connections quite work, the end product feels comforting enough, like a tin of Quality Street that, despite its occasional dud, can be rather satisfying.
Jeremy Arblaster
