Love Actually (2003)

Starring Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, Martine McCutcheon, Keira Knightley, Rowan Atkinson.
Written and directed by Richard Curtis.
Produced by Duncan Kenworthy, Tim Bevan, and Eric Fellner.
Distributed by Universal Pictures.
129 minutes.

LVJeff's Rating: 8/10

Feel Good, Actually

The main weakness of Love Actually is uncovered right as the movie starts. It opens by showing scenes from an airport terminal, where various people of all ages embrace those who have just disembarked from the airliners. A voiceover points to the terminals as a place that reminds us the world is full of love -- that, although we are lead to believe hateful events dominate society, "love actually is all around."

This is a nice sentiment -- I, too, have watched the arrivals at airport terminals and had similar thoughts -- and, when examining it more closely, one can see how the foundations of love are made solid by years of maintaining relationships, inevitably through ups and downs. That kind of love is indeed all around -- but Love Actually isn't concerned with that. Instead, the movie, which is an interweaving of what seems like a dozen plotlines, focuses mostly on the beginnings of relationships and a few ends. After the fifth or sixth instance of a new couple's blossoming love, it becomes apparent that the movie doesn't really want to explore its own declared thesis; it mostly just wants the audience to feel good and revel in the warmth of a fresh attraction.

This in and of itself is not a bad thing. Love Actually is a deft and daring directorial debut for veteran romantic comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis. Since the film's loaded with some of the United Kingdom's biggest stars, from Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, and Emma Thompson to Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, and Colin Firth, one wonders how much directing Curtis really had to do -- the stars all play characters that are more or less just extensions of their well-known screen personas. But to tie them all together with a confident screenplay, which Curtis himself wrote, is a noteworthy accomplishment. One might fear getting lost among all the story threads being told, but that doesn't happen. Each character's situation is distinct, and their transitions, crossings, and overlappings are smooth and clear. And because the emphasis is on comedy, viewers may find themselves more than willing to keep up.

I am more than willing to applaud the gutsiness it takes to tell such a large collection of tales, especially since an undertaking of this sort has numerous inherent problems, almost all of which are present in this movie. The everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach will always lead to the all-eggs-in-one-basket weakness, and, here, it's at its most harmless when one finds oneself looking forward to the "strong" storylines while grudgingly sitting through the "weak" ones (mileage may vary, of course -- personally, I loved Hugh Grant's British version of The American President, but didn't care much for the all-too-written cutesiness of Colin Firth's tale of a lucky rebound). Much worse, however, is the movie's overall tonal inconsistency. At its most extreme, it features on one end a very jokey story of a Brit (Kris Marshall) travelling to America to score with easy girls and on the other end a sad story featuring Laura Linney and the responsibiility she bears that may prevent her from ever fulfilling her own search for romantic love. When looking at these two threads side-by-side, we don't know what we should be thinking. In the end, Linney's character's story sort of just drops off the map -- the emphasis, we are reminded, is on comedy, but then this makes Linney's character seem that much less deserving of her treatment in the film.

Because many of the funny parts work so well -- Bill Nighy's storyline, for instance, is a true crack-up -- one wonders what place the dramatic parts really have here. With its acceleration to a big, so-corny-it-works finale, the movie does a fair amount of work fighting to remain relatively frivolous in order to give that audience its holiday cheer. About the deepest thing it can say about us as people through its multiple depictions of relationships beginning and ending is we all have a common need to connect to other human beings. And so we do, but does that really show us that "love actually is all around"? I can only think of two places in the movie where that most common kind of love, that bond forged through the fires and storms of life, is depicted well. First, the aforementioned Bill Nighy storyline is not only very funny but also ends up showing us the truest definition of love -- one whole movie could have just been about him and it would have been thematically potent. The second is at the movie's start and finish, where we are treated to those airport arrivals, saying so much with so little. The rest you can call tasteful, effective, and entertaining holiday dressing.

©Jeffrey Chen, Nov. 3, 2003

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