Love Actually

PLOT:

The film begins with a voiceover from David (Hugh Grant) commenting that whenever he gets gloomy with the state of the world he thinks about the arrivals terminal at Heathrow Airport, and the pure uncomplicated love felt as friends and families welcome their arriving loved ones. David’s voiceover also relates that all the known messages left by the people who died on the 9/11 planes were messages of love and not hate. The film then tells the ‘love stories’ of many people, culminating in a final scene at the airport enacted to the tune of The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” that closes their stories. The film ends with a montage of anonymous persons greeting their arriving loved ones that slowly enlarges and fills the screen, eventually forming the shape of a heart.

With the help of his longtime manager Joe (Gregor Fisher), aging rock and roll legend Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) records a Christmas variation of The Troggs’ classic hit “Love Is All Around.” Despite his honest admission that it is a “festering turd of a record,” the singer promotes the release in the hope it will become the Christmas number one single. During his publicity tour, Billy repeatedly causes Joe grief by pulling stunts such as defacing a poster of rival musicians Blue with a speech bubble reading, “We’ve got little pricks.” He also promises to perform his song naked on television should it hit the top spot. Mack keeps his word—albeit while wearing boots and holding a strategically placed guitar. After briefly celebrating his victory at a party hosted by Sir Elton John, Billy unexpectedly arrives at Joe’s flat and explains that Christmas is a time to be with the people you love, and that he had just realized that “the people I love… is you”, despite simultaneously hitting Joe with insulting comments about his weight. He reminds Joe that “We have had a wonderful ride” touring around the world together over the years. He suggests that the two celebrate Christmas by getting drunk and watching porn. Billy and Joe’s story is the only one exploring platonic love, and the two characters are unrelated to any of the other characters in film, although a few of the other characters are shown watching Billy Mack on their TVs or listening to his song on the radio. At the end of the film, Billy Mack arrives at the airport terminal with a gorgeous six-foot blonde woman pushing his luggage cart. He refers to her as one of two (and possibly more) new girlfriends, indicating that, despite his love for Joe, he is heterosexual. Joe is there to greet him and their friendly relationship remains solid.

Juliet (Keira Knightley) and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are wed in a lovely ceremony orchestrated and videotaped by Mark (Andrew Lincoln), Peter’s best friend and best man. When the professional wedding video turns out to be dreadful, Juliet shows up at Mark’s door in hopes of getting a copy of his footage, despite the fact that he has always been cold and unfriendly to her. The video turns out to consist entirely of close-ups of her, and she realizes that he secretly has had feelings for her. Mortified, Mark explains that his coldness to her is “a self-preservation thing” and excuses himself. On Christmas Eve, Mark shows up at Juliet and Peter’s door posing as a carol singer with a portable CD player, and uses a series of cardboard signs to silently tell her that “at Christmas you tell the truth,” and, “without hope or agenda… to me, you are perfect”. As he leaves, Juliet runs after him and kisses him, before returning to Peter. Mark tells himself, “Enough, enough now,” perhaps acknowledging that it’s time to move on with his life. All three appear at the airport in the closing scenes to greet Jamie and Aurélia, showing that the friendship between Peter and Mark has not been affected by the latter’s feelings for Juliet.

Writer Jamie (Colin Firth) first appears preparing to attend Juliet and Peter’s wedding. His girlfriend (Sienna Guillory) misses the ceremony allegedly due to illness, but when Jamie unexpectedly returns home before the reception, he discovers her engaging in sexual relations with his brother. Heartbroken, Jamie retires to the solitude of his French cottage to immerse himself in his writing. Here he meets Portuguese housekeeper Aurélia (Lúcia Moniz), who speaks only her native tongue. Despite the language barrier they manage to communicate with each other, with subtitles indicating they are at times in agreement with each other, and sometimes of opposite minds. Jamie returns to London, where he takes a course in Portuguese. On Christmas Eve, he decides to ditch celebrations with his family to fly to Marseille. In the crowded Portuguese restaurant where Aurelia works her second job as a waitress, he proposes to her in his mangled Portuguese, and she accepts using her recently learned English. The film ends with Jamie and Aurélia, now engaged. At the airport they are met by Peter, Juliet, and Mark. Aurelia jokes that if Jamie had told her his friends were so handsome, she might have chosen a different Englishman. Jamie then jokes that she doesn’t speak English well and doesn’t know what she’s saying.

Harry (Alan Rickman) is the managing director of a design agency. Mia (Heike Makatsch), his new secretary, clearly has sexual feelings for him. His nascent mid-life crisis allows him tentatively to welcome her attention, and for Christmas he buys her an expensive necklace from jewelery salesman Rufus (Rowan Atkinson), who takes a very long time adding ever more elaborate wrapping while Harry becomes increasingly nervous with the fear of detection. Meanwhile, Harry’s wife Karen (Emma Thompson) is busy dealing with their children, Daisy (Lulu Popplewell) and Bernard (William Wadham), who are appearing in the school Nativity, her brother David, a politician who just became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and her friend Daniel, who has just lost his wife to cancer. Karen discovers the necklace in Harry’s coat pocket and assumes it is a gift for her, only to be given the CD Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now to “continue [Karen’s] emotional education”, as Harry puts it, instead. She then believes Harry is having an affair with Mia, and briefly breaks down alone in her bedroom before composing herself to attend the children’s play with her husband. Following the play, Karen confronts Harry over the necklace, who admits, “I am so in the wrong — a classic fool”, to which Karen replies: “Yes, but you’ve also made a fool out of me — you’ve made the life I lead foolish too,” before blinking back tears and enthusiastically congratulating their children. As for Mia, she is shown smiling while trying on the necklace. In the final airport scene, Harry returns home from a trip abroad, and Karen and his children are there to greet him. Harry is delighted to see his kids again; his exchange with Karen is more perfunctory, but suggests that, though the two are not on steady terms, they intend to give their marriage a chance.

Karen’s brother, the recently-elected British Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant), is young, handsome, and single. Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) is a new junior member of the household staff at 10 Downing Street and regularly serves his tea and biscuits. Something seems to click between them, but with the exception of some mild flirting, neither pursues the attraction. When the President of the United States (Billy Bob Thornton) pays a visit, his conservative attitude and flat refusal to relax any policies leave the British advisors stymied. It is only after David walks in to find the President attempting to seduce Natalie that he stands up for the UK at a nationally televised press conference, saying Britain is a great country for things like Harry Potter, The Beatles and David Beckham’s right foot (“David Beckham’s left foot, come to that”), and chides the President by saying that “a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend.” Concerned that his affections for Natalie are affecting his political judgment, David asks for her to be “redistributed.” Later, while looking through a sampling of Christmas cards, David comes across a card signed “I’m actually yours. With Love, Your Natalie.” Encouraged by this he sets out to find her. After much doorbell ringing, including a ring at Mia’s house, David eventually finds Natalie at her family’s home. Hoping to have some time with Natalie, David offers to drive everyone to the local school for the play, the same one in which his niece and nephew are appearing (as he realizes only when his sister, Karen – still unsteady from her recent discovery of her husband’s suspected affair – spots him and thanks him for finally managing to come to a family function). The two watch the show from backstage, and their budding relationship is exposed to the audience when a curtain at the rear of the stage is raised during the big finale and David and Natalie are caught in a passionate kiss. Undeterred, they smile and wave. In the final airport scene, as David walks through the gate at the airport in the finale, Natalie – heedless of the surrounding paparazzi – runs straight through his entourage and leaps into his arms, planting a big kiss on him.

Daniel (Liam Neeson), Karen’s friend, is introduced in the film during a funeral for his wife, Joanna. Her death, caused by an unspecified long-term illness, has left Daniel and his stepson Sam (Thomas Sangster) to fend for themselves. Daniel must deal with his sudden responsibility, as well as the perceived end of his love life. (“That was a done deal long ago”, he says to Sam, “unless, of course, Claudia Schiffer calls, in which case I want you out of the house straight away, you wee motherless mongrel.”) Sam, too, is especially forlorn about something, eventually revealing that he is in love with an American girl from his school, also named Joanna (Olivia Olson), who he assumes does not know he exists. After seeing Billy Mack’s new video in a store window, he comes up with a plan, based on the premise that “girls love musicians. Even the really weird ones get girlfriends.” With Daniel’s encouragement, Sam teaches himself to play the drums, eventually acting as top for Joanna’s performance of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” at the aforementioned Nativity Festival. Unfortunately, Sam’s drumming fails to secure Joanna’s attention the way he had hoped. After the play, Daniel consoles Sam, who is also heartbroken over recent news of Joanna’s return to the United States, and convinces him to go catch Joanna at the airport.

While Sam dashes off to collect his things, Daniel bumps into another parent, Carol (played by Claudia Schiffer), and sparks immediately fly. Sam and Daniel leave to find Joanna before she and her family board their flight to America. Once Daniel and Sam arrive, the attendant refuses to let Sam through. However, while the attendant is distracted by another passenger, the jewelry clerk Rufus, Sam is able to sneak through and race past the security checkpoint. With the gate staff distracted by Billy Mack’s promised naked performance on TV monitors, Sam is able to reach Joanna and confess his love to her just as she is about to board the plane. He is brought back to his stepfather by security guards, but Joanna runs back to Sam to give him a kiss on the cheek. In triumph he leaps into Daniel’s arms. In the finale, Daniel and Sam have returned to the airport with Carol and her son as Sam awaits Joanna’s return. When Joanna walks through the doors, Sam says, “Hello,” restraining the impulse to embrace her. Daniel curses, “He should have kissed her…” but Carol soothes him, “No, that’s cool.”

Sarah (Laura Linney) first appears at the wedding of Juliet and Peter, sitting next to her friend Jamie. We learn she works at Harry’s graphic design company and has been in love for years with the creative director Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), a not-so-secret obsession recognized by Harry, who implores her to say something to him since it’s Christmas and Karl is aware of her feelings anyway. Unfortunately for all concerned, Sarah has an institutionalized and mentally ill brother who calls her mobile phone incessantly. Sarah feels responsible for her brother and constantly puts her life on hold to support him. Sarah’s chance at making love with Karl, following her company’s Christmas party (hosted at an art gallery run by Mark), is abandoned when her brother again calls her at the most inopportune time. Karl suggests that she not answer (asking, “Will it make him better?”), but she does so anyway, effectively ending their relationship. On Christmas Eve, she wishes Karl “Merry Christmas” as he leaves the office, and it is clear he wants to say something to her, but he departs and she breaks down in tears before picking up her phone to ring her brother. She is seen spending Christmas in her brother’s institution, wrapping a scarf around him. They are the only couple not seen at the end of the movie at the airport.

After several blunders attempting to woo various English women, including Mia and the caterer at Juliet and Peter’s wedding, Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall) informs his friend Tony (Abdul Salis) he plans to go to the US and find love there because, in his estimation, that country is full to the brim with gorgeous women who will fall head over heels for him because of his ‘cute British accent’. (‘Stateside I’m Prince William without the weird family.’) The first place he goes after landing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is an ‘average’ US bar where he meets three stunningly attractive women (Ivana Milicevic, January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert) who after falling for his Basildon accent invite him to stay at their home, specifically in their bed, with them and their housemate Harriet (Shannon Elizabeth) (‘the sexy one’). They warn him that because they are poor they can’t even afford pajamas, so everyone will be naked. In the finale Colin returns to England with Harriet for himself and her sister Carla (Denise Richards) for Tony. Carla hugs and kisses a startled Tony at the airport, telling him ‘I heard you were gorgeous’.

In a story that was excised completely from the censored version of the DVD release of the film, John (Martin Freeman) and Judy (Joanna Page), who up to this point were unknown to each other, work as stand-ins for the sex scenes in a movie. Colin’s friend Tony is part of the film crew, and gives them directions as to the activities they should simulate so that lighting checks and such can be completed before the actors are called to the set. Despite their blatantly sexual actions, and frequent nudity, they are very naturally comfortable with each other, discussing politics, traffic, and previous jobs as if they’d known one another for years. John even tells Judy that “it is nice to have someone [he] can just chat with.” The two carefully and cautiously pursue a relationship, and see the play at the local school together with John’s brother. In the finale at the airport, Tony, while waiting for Colin, runs into John and Judy, about to depart on a trip together. Judy happily displays an engagement ring on her finger.

Rufus is a minor but significant character played by Rowan Atkinson. He is the Selfridges jewellery salesman whose obsessive attention to gift-wrapping nearly gets Harry caught buying Mia’s necklace, and later at the airport, his distraction of an attendant allows Sam to sneak through security and see Joanna before she goes back to America. In the original script, the character was revealed to be an angel, and the airport scene showed him disappearing as he walked through the crowd, but this aspect of the character was removed, although he does give Daniel a wink indicating he knows he is giving Sam cover to slip through. Richard Curtis says that with all the storylines already complicating the movie, “the idea of introducing another layer of supernatural beings” seemed over-the-top.

REVIEW:

I’m not a bug romantic comedy guy, but I will watch them willingly. Today, I actually chose to watch this (partially because the little woman was hinting at it). Having said that, I’m not ashamed to say that this was quite an enjoyable film.

Similar to the Harry Potter films, the cast is exclusively British (with a few exceptions). I am not one to bring about nationality and stuff, but the Britihs setting and cast work. For some reason, if this was done with American actors, I don’t think the charm would have been there. There’s just something about British accents that make almost everything better.

I really like how each of the stories intertwines, and they all come together at the end. Films that have these multiple storylines should do that more often. It relinquishes the confusion that the audience may be feeling after watching the entire film.

Let’s discuss the good parts of the film. First we have the aforementioned intertwining storylines that I just discussed. Then we have the performances of all the actors. I don’t believe a single one of them gave a bad performance. If I had to sya there was a breakout star, it would have to be the lovely Martine McCutcheon, who plays Natalie. The mixture of her talent and total cuteness steals the show. Hopefully Hollywood will give her a call and we can see more of her here in the states. It can’t be forgotten that this is a comedy. Granted, it isn’t a laugh out loud, riotous, knee slapping type of comedy, but it does have a few moments that will get a rise out of the audience. Pay special attention to Bill Nighy’s scenes for these.

The bad parts are few and far between, but they have to be brought up. The main issue I have with this film is that it doesn’t develop the minor characters enough. They play major roles in the film, but none of them are anything more than glorified cameos.  I also have a little bit of issue with the ending, aside from those that are related, how do these people all happen to know each other. That’s just me being nitpicky and curious, though.

This is far from being a bad film, but it isn’t a macho guy film. It seems more like the type of cheesy romance flick you watch during the holidays. It really is a good film, though. Snuggle up to someone you love, pop it in and enjoy.

4 out of 5 stars