Film Hello. I know that apart from the all too obviously auto-posting BBC Mondays I haven't been around here much, but with Doctor Who's anniversary cranking up, the Sugababes glow-up, the Empire Magazine project which I've been writing about on BlueSky (@feelinglistless.bsky.social) having abandoned Twixxer and having finally reached 100% on Star Wars Lego: The Skywalker Saga, I expect there'll be the odd thing. Not that I'm making any kind of promises; I shall not be entering the existential void of every post being about how I should post more.
But I couldn't not return for the news made pretty obvious from the headline to this post. Richard Curtis thinks Love Actually is rubbish as well now. It's even made the cover of the Daily Star:
It's been reported in a lot of places, but let's link the Chortle version which is where I first heard the news. Curtis was at the Cheltenham Literary Festival being interviewed on stage by his daughter Charlotte, how put to him many of the points I made in the sixth most popular post on this blog about the treatment of women, particularly the "multiple accounts of inappropriate boss behaviour [...] and how in the general the women are visions of unattainable loveliness".
The writer who should never have been his own directors said:
"I think I was unobservant and not as clever as I should have been."
On diversity: "I think because I came from a very undiverse school and bunch of university friends, I think that I hung on to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts. I think I was just stupid and wrong about that. I felt as though me, my casting director, my producers just didn’t look outwards."
On fatphobia: "I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett said to me, "You can never use the word fat again". And, wow, you were right. In my generation, calling someone "chubby" ... in Love, Actually, there are endless jokes about that. I think I was behind the curve and those jokes aren’t any longer funny."
They weren't funny then, especially because you were describing the character played by Martine McCutcheon and how that reflects back on younger viewers who may be struggling with their own body image. The only reason I didn't mention that in my dissertation is because I was making a comparison with the treatment of gender and race in two other films, Happy Ending and Short Cuts.
Of course, Love Actually is over twenty years old now and edging ever closer to "vintage" and "of its time" labelling. There are humans walking around on this planet who're in their twenties who were born after it was originally released. It was released the same year Russell T Davies was commissioned to write and producer the Doctor Who revival.
Does this mean I'm willing to relax a little, perhaps admit that it isn't the worst film of all time? No, not a bit because that would require me to choose a different film and although About Time, The Boat That Rocked (or Pirate Radio if you're outside the UK) and Yesterday are waiting in the wings, I'm too vintage myself now to go through that mental hardship.
FilmAngie Sammons on the new look Liverpool Confidential website notices that Love Actually will be playing at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool this Christmas (11th December) with a live orchestra, so you can hear the theme from Shakespeare in Love again in the same room which would be an attractive prospect if it was actually Shakespeare in Love. Lord is it expensive:
"With the best tickets in the house going for £65 a pop, you might want to consider taking your own flask of mulled wine and secreting a mince pie or two in your underparts to offset the cost. Or just wheel a trolley around the Aintree Asda any time after October 31 to hear Mariah Carey warble All I Want For Christmas, while reminding yourself never to attempt it's difficult vocal in any public place, especially on gin."
For £65 you could go and see six decent films at FACT. Or buy the whole of FRIENDS on blu-ray. Or a return ticket to practically anywhere in the country and visit the Christmas market. Ironically, I'll be spending eight hours in London doing exactly that on the same day as the concert. Shame.
Yes, you'll have also noticed that I'm mentioned in that article because of my enmity for this piteous two hours. As ever. it's a bit weird seeing my surname used that newsy way which reminds me of school, where everyone was known by their family name. But it's nice of Sammons to spread the word, try to save as many people as possible.
Film Find above the US version of the Love Actually Sequel as hosted by NBC. Yes, the US version. Spoilers ahead:
(1) New celebrities edited into the closing montage from the US edition of Red Nose Day including Jack Black.
(2) Rowan Atkinson's angel now works for Walgreens, the second largest chemist in the US and owners of Boots UK. Except he's doing exactly the same routine as in the UK version in front of the same child. So the counter set was a green screen with the relevant shop comped in, his lapel badge has been replaced and the young shopper has been dubbed.
(3) New scene. Sarah as played by Laura Linney, one of the biggest omissions from before is back here in a scene tucked in between the end of Atkinson and the start of Liam Neeson. Sarah finally receives a happy ending, if you assume it's a good thing that she's still in what appears to be the same job all these years later but married to Patrick Dempsey. Dempsey actually gets more screen time than she does, and the whole thing is mainly told from his POV, but we do also discover she has at least one child and a pet.
According to Harper's Bizarre this stuff was shot after the UK broadcast, Linney finding a gap in her schedule during a Broadway run. But for the fact that the two actors clearly aren't talking to one another, the conversation doesn't quite match, it's still a charming little scene and I'd be a horrible person if I wasn't pleased that Sarah finally looks properly happy. We don't know what's happened to her brother, unless it's his shoes which are the problem but they look rather small if that's what Dempsey's putting in his pocket. I'll stop now.
Film As you will have noticed from the many click bait articles which have slipstreamed in its stead containing what amount to a synopsis and screenshots for people without the patience to sit through ten minutes of moving images with sound, a Love Actually sequel was broadcast during this year's Comic Relief. I did not watch Comic Relief. Comic Relief stopped actually being comic relief many years ago when budgets were clearly cut and many of the comedians I actually liked retired in favour of the kinds of people who turn up on comedy panel shows. Oh and when paradoxically they stopped doing special versions of comedy panel shows.
But I did dip in after seeing High Plains Drifter for the Love Actually sequel if only so that I wasn't going to be spoilt by the many click bait articles which have slipstreamed in its stead containing what amount to a synopsis and screenshots. Perhaps it would provide an magical epilogue to the original monstrosity with the ability to retrospectively nullify some of its crimes. In the event, caught between homage, parody and straight sequel and shot in a televisual style on 16:9 digi-cameras, well, no, no it didn't. The moment at the end of the making of documentary on the Spaced dvd which showed what happened next for Tim and Daisy was more relevant and essential.
Yet it feels like I should provide some analysis, not least because thanks to discovering the joy of reading and binging on Star Trek, this blog has lately become without form and void just as I feared it might do at some point. Linking to the same bloody film review and old blog posts on Twitter isn't the same thing. To provide some structure I'll reuse some of the subject headings from that same bloody film review even though most of them probably won't fit. There's not a lot you can do with a ten minute piece. On the upside, unlike the content of that original post, I don't have the final mark for a post-graduate degree counting on it being coherent.
It’s not a romantic comedy.
Still isn't. One of the inherent problems with sequels to romantic comedies is that narrative unity has already been fulfilled first time around. That's why there tends to be so few of them, there's nothing less amusing than watching the same couple fall in love again. That's why they generally seek to focus on some other couple who're related to the main characters from the original film, as per This is 40 or My Big Fat Greek Wedding II. The reason the Before ... trilogy works is because the first film didn't provide a solid ending, there was a moment of doubt, something which could be picked up later in the unplanned sequel.
Love Actually again isn't trying to be a rom-com in the strictest sense, setting itself up to follow the pattern of Richard Linklater's films and the Cold Feet revival. What are these beloved characters doing now? As with both those examples, in the answer in this text is getting old, although with the slim running time there precious little space to enter into any profound discussions about the implications of ageing. About as close as the script comes to such is Liam Neeson's Daniel acting like a Outbin clicker "You won't believe how old your son looks now ..."
Though it's noticeable that all of the original film's featured hetro couples are still together after fourteen years. The huge mistep is in killing off Gregor Fisher's manager character offscreen and in an offhand comic way. His ambiguous relationship with Bill Nighy's Billy Mac was one of the film's few truly poignant moments and to plop that revelation into the middle of this seems ill advised and somewhat ruins the conclusion of that storyline depending on how canonical you consider this sequel to be. There'll be fan arguments on discussion boards for years to come. "But it was for charity and featured the Eastenders!" "Yes, but it's the Rani's third tv appearance!" That sort of thing.
It’s poorly edited.
Arguable. Mainly a series of sketches, there is some motioning towards the structure of the original film with some cross cutting between some characters single scenes and the sections featuring Hugh's PM and Atkinson's angel (or whatever he's supposed to be). But there's no sense of time. Is the car ride between Jamie and Aurelia supposed to happening while the shop assistant is filling the bag or are we supposed to assume that they're disembodied sketches, the cross cutting between mirroring the approach used frequently in The League of Gentlemen or The Fast Show?
Presumably the idea is to create an increased longevity to that shop scene but the point of the scene in the original film, other than providing levity to a moment about a man buying a present for his potential mistress, was that due to the longevity, the audience, like Alan Rickman's character was stuck in that moment watching the shenanigans as they pressed on and on and on. Cutting away here kills the joke stone dead. Not that it was especially funny to begin with due to the lack of surprises. Especially when Curtis cut to the massive queue outside. Didn't see that coming. At all.
They’re barely characters.
Quadruply true here. Imagine if you'd been lucky enough to have never seen Love Actually before watching what amounts to a series of callbacks to (admittedly for some) beloved scenes. None of it really makes any sense and only goes to highlight as I indicated in the original review, just how much they're simply playing versions of the kinds of roles they've played elsewhere.
It's also notable that most of the male actors in here haven't changed the kinds of roles they play that much in the meantime. Most of them have simply shifted into more character rather than leading men roles, with the exception of Liam Neeson who has become an all the skills action hero something none of us expected. I miss the man who made Kinsey.
It’s less funny and even a bit creepy the second time around.
Good god, the Andrew Lincoln section makes that original storyline even worse. Now we can watch the original film safe in the knowledge that stalkery Mark is going to return in fourteen years to essentially shame Juliet for not choosing him in the first place and then boasting that he's married Kate Moss. Who actually turns up so she can be part of the reveal. I appreciate this is supposed to be funny and charming and a homage to the Claudia Schiffer cameo in the original film and has a metafictional element in which the idiot boards talk the viewer but the fact that Richard Curtis still doesn't get why all of this is horrendous, unfunny, creepy and sinister does him no credit. In this month Empire, during an interview with Paul Feig he even mentions someone calling this the "the stalker scene" to his face. He knows. He knows. And yet here we are again.
It’s about middle class white men seducing their employees.
This sequel only goes to remind us of this and even uses their change of status as a source of humour. "I liked you best when you worked for me" he says. Christ. Oh how they must reminisce. "Remember when I used to pay you a salary?" There's no indication as to whether Aurelia has her own job now and without much more evidence it's not fair of me to speculate. But that is a lot of children. Hopefully they share the caring duties.
Nearly all of the men are creeps anyway.
Fucks sake Jamie haven't you learnt Portugese yet? You've been married to her for over a decade and her English is amazing. Your children know the language better than you do. I appreciate this was the point of that scene and writing is hard and finding something new to do with this couple was probably tough but it makes Jamie look even more foolish than he did in the original film and that's saying something. Admittedly that's not creepy in the Mark sense, but another definition is "slow steady movement, especially when imperceptible" which seems to fit the bill here.
The only two “main” female characters have unhappy endings.
Almost all of the female characters are still in supporting roles and used to create a moment of surprise, Natalie bursting in on her husband dancing, Kate Moss's cameo and Joanna's reveal (It literally is "Here's Love Actually's Olivia Olsen all grown up! Photos on pages 3, 4 & 8"). Incidentally, in that same EMPIRE interview, Richard Curtis says the Laura Linney storyline from the first film is something he's most proud of. He still doesn't get it, even now.
Assuming they’re main characters at all.
The one exception is Aurelia who has one of the longer speeches and funniest reactions in the piece (making Jamie's lack of language skills somewhat forgivable). A glance at the IMDb indicates Lúcia Moniz has been in solid work on Portugese television since 2003. Good for her.
It has a stunning lack of diversity.
Still somewhat true in a lead character sense due to the casting choices from the original film. Chiwetel Ejiofor remains on the sidelines. Gregor Fisher's potentially gay character has been killed off. But the supporting cast is exceedingly diverse, notably the boy who acts as straight person for Atkinson's antics and the press pack in the press conference at number 10, although that is still overwhelmingly white (probably simply reflecting the industry more than anything given how many of the people in the crowd were invited from actual news organisations).
Three redeeming features:
(1) "And Piers Morgan's still alive." Oh burn and the only genuinely laugh out loud funny moment due to its audacity. Morgan spent Comic Relief Day in a vow of silence. I wonder if that broke when he sat watching this and heard that comment. It's amazing he wasn't straight on Twitter saying nasty things about Hacked Off again or whatever.
(2) Hugh's final speech, which he plays beautifully, recalling his superb performance in Curse of the Fatal Death. Curtis knows how to write this stuff still at least and the message, as Mark Kermode also says, that everything is going to be alright in the end, is just the sort of thing we all need to hear right now. Plus the Elf joke which I'm sure pleased Gary Bainbridge who hates that film just as much as I hate Love Actually.
(3) It was short.
In Conclusion
There was a time when I adored Love Actually, before having to take it apart frame by frame for my dissertation and I'd be lying if I didn't say that there was something Proustian about revisiting these characters or that re-hearing the Shakespeare in Love theme at the end didn't make me sigh. Some people still love this film and I can't hold that against them. Indeed this almost made me want to go back and watch it again after ten years. Perhaps I'm just afraid I'll like it too.
"My best friend and I went to see it on the day it opened, excited as babes on Christmas Day. We loved Notting Hill, and we adored Four Weddings and a Funeral, and sure, they were basically odes to the Oxbridge-educated, but they had charm and clever scripts. And those movies only had one plot line – this new one had nine! That meant it would be nine times as awesome, right? Wrong. We emerged from the cinema with faces frozen like Munch’s Scream, and silently went our separate ways. We called each other later to check in on one another, like victims of a terrible disaster."
Unlike Hadley I actually liked Love Actually at first. Saw it twice at the cinema, asked for the dvd at Christmas (etc etc) and it wasn't until I studied it for the dissertation I noticed how disdainful it is. Let's see if the Comic Relief sequel acts as a corrective.
Film Right then, let's address. As you will have seen and was reported to me by a few concerned citizens through social media, Comic Relief has announced that its mentor Richard Curtis has decided to produce a ten minute sequel to the worst film of all time for the televisual fundraiser. As per Buzzfeed (and a hundred other news organisations looking to do something other than report on the end of civilisation as we know it) (yes, I appreciate the irony), shooting begins today.
The Red Nose Day website has the press release which has notion of what it'll be and lists who the returning cast is:
"Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson and Rowan Atkinson will be stepping back into their iconic roles, alongside fellow cast members Martine McCutcheon, Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lucia Moniz, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Olivia Olson, Bill Nighy and Marcus Brigstocke."
(1) Neither Emma Thompson or Laura Linney are returning it seems so we won't discover if the two main female characters from the first film had happy endings in the end after all.
(2) What will the tone be? Is it going to be shot in the same style and potentially act as a thirteen years later epilogue to the original affair or are they simply going to shoot the thing like a single camera sitcom with everyone in the same room and take the piss out of themselves. At least the first option would have some integrity.
(3) Marcus Brigstocke's expanded role suggests his scenes will be with Bill Nighy subbing in for Gregor Fisher in his story.
(4) Stalker Mark is back to menace Peter and Juliet. If it's in homage to the original ending (and let's face it ...) that'll make him not just even creepier but probably a police matter.
(5) No Martin Freeman and Joanna Page.
(6) No Kris Marshall either so we should be thankful for small mercies.
(7) Of course its entirely possible that anyone missing from the list will appear in a suprise cameo.
(8) Yes I'll watch it. You never know it could be good.
(9) At least it isn't a Class minisode.
(10) I'm going to be writing a review, aren't I?
Is charity an excuse for any of this? Don't answer that.
"The cue-card guy in Love Actually—his character is so roughly sketched that he is generally and correctly known simply as Cue-Card Guy—shows up at the door of his beloved, while her husband sits watching TV, to confess his love. There he is, at her home, without, the cards say, “hope or expectation,” for the purpose of … what? Confusing her? Making her feel good about herself? Convincing her that she should totally leave his best friend for her? Using her so that he may, himself, get some much-needed romantic closure?
"It’s unclear—opacity is the defining characteristic of Cue-Card Guy—but the movie suggests that it is probably the latter of these: “Enough,” Cue-Card Guy says to himself as he’s walking away from her house, “Silent Night” still blaring on his Doblerian boombox, having successfully passed his romantic frustrations on to the woman who is their object. “Enough now.”
Not to mention the number of romcoms in which the male character does something aggressively appauling to the woman who quite rightly moves on and then, what was up to that point a relatively balanced narrative in which both characters have agency, becomes about him trying to win her back, she becoming little more than object in an metaphoric/emotional recreation of the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost arc.
And yes, I'm entirely aware that my favourite film of all time, When Harry Met Sally, somewhat does this, including the run against time and the big speech. But in that case neither character is really right or wrong, I don't think and Sally still keeps her agency. Plus the film in general is about friendship rather than romance and you get the feeling that even if they were to divorce later they'd still remain friends. Or rather that they get married because they're stuck together.
Film Some time today, Neil tweeted me a link to a rangey interview with US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy which wanders about across a range of topics including, oddly his favourite film, which a press release told them was E.T. Sadly, it isn't:
"It is a movie I like a lot, but it’s not my favorite movie. There are two movies I wrote down. I’m going to give you two. It’s a bit of a dodge, but I’ll give you two. And one of them is a recent movie that came out, “The Martian,” with Matt Damon, our local Boston hero. And the other is an older movie with Hugh Grant, called “Love Actually.”"
Oh dear. I'll give him The Martian. It was one of my favourite films of last year is sure to be looked at fondly for years to come. But, ugh. He continues:
"I’ll go on to further embarrass myself and admit that it’s one of the very few movies I actually own. I’m just digging a hole here."
Yes, yes, you are. But go on.
"The reason I enjoy it so much is that it’s about love, as well. Love is the oldest medicine that we have. We focus so much on new drugs and new therapeutics and sometimes in an effort to bring in the new, we forget about the old. That’s true with technology, it’s true with medicine, it’s true with so much else."
Which doesn't say anything about the actual film. He could have said exactly the same about When Harry Met Sally and retained some credibility.
"We fixate on Facebook and forget the importance of face-to-face conversation. We text people and forget the importance of hearing their voice. But when it comes to healing, love is a powerful source of healing. As powerful as our medicines are, when a patient doesn’t have a source of love in their life, it makes it difficult to heal. These old medicines, of which love is the most important, are very powerful."
Yes, yes it is. But it doesn't say what you specifically like Love Actually. I find that rather telling. If only the interviewer had pressed him further. Instead they segway into police brutality.
"... prefer a good honest portmanteau. It’s less tricksy than a hyperlink film. Every section has to stand or fall on its own merits, as well as complement the whole. If one segment doesn’t entertain, it risks being cut out: the other segments will survive without it. Sub-Altman hyperlink films, on the other hand, can use their constant back-and-forthing to disguise the weakness of the individual strands. You don’t get such shilly-shallying from Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, where every gruesome story packs a punch and has a twist to remember. Great title, too."
But as I researched my dissertation, one of the questions I had to deal with in relation to considering if this was a genre and what its tropes might be was what the "pleasures" might be for the audience, the repeated element that people look for. In hyperlink films this is the moment when you realise how the people are connected, that two characters you've been following are actually (sorry) siblings or married or co-workers or whatever something which often doesn't happen until deep into the film causing you to re-evaluate what you've seen before. Todd Solondz is a master of this - Happiness being the primary example. Oddly, he doesn't pention Paris J'Taime which brilliantly is a portmantau film, until it isn't.
Film Yes indeed. Covers most of the main issues I have with the film without the film studies jargon, the Hunest Traylor of Love Actually is near perfect and educational. See if you can spot the moment when I screamed, "Oh my God! Is that her? Oh my God" whilst quietly seething because having had to watch the thing so many times when writing my dissertation, I didn't notice. Not as many times as the makers of this Honest Trailer presumably, poor humans. Spoiler in this post's labels.
Film Apologies for recreating the same click bate headline I saw on about three other blogs with its implication that Richard Curtis (who at this point I'd welcome back to Doctor Who with open arms) and his opinion of his own film has evolved. It hasn't really. He actually just describing the editing process:
"The only nightmare scenario that I’ve been caught in was Love Actually, which worked at the read-through, and when we finished the film and I watched it edited it was … a catastrophe,” said Curtis in comments first reported by the Radio Times. “Because there were 12 stories, [finding the right order] was like three-dimensional chess … And that was enormously difficult to finish or get right.”
The editing left the film riddled with plot holes and continuity errors as I described in the original post-mortem. He only finished in as much as he didn't do anything else to it. He didn't get it right.
Film Love Actually was broadcast again on mainstream television, on Christmas Day on ITV1 and again on ITV2 on the 30th December. If listings magazines and websites are good for anything, it's giving fair warning for such outrages.
"Which brings me to the film’s final message, which is, essentially: If something, God forbid, does go wrong—well, you’re screwed. It’s probably best if you give up on love altogether and get on with the rest of your life. This message is transmitted via the two storylines that do not culminate happily: the Linney-Santoro fling and the strained marriage of Rickman and Thompson. After pining interminably for Santoro, Linney finally gets her big opportunity after an office party, luring him back to her apartment to have sex. (Again, the idea that they might actually talk first—perhaps over a glass of wine?—is foreign to the movie’s whole conception of how love progresses.) Alas, their amorous coupling is interrupted by a phone call from her institutionalized brother, and then a second. Clearly, it’s hopeless—and not merely this particular date, but the relationship altogether. The idea of trying again another night is not even entertained. It’s not as though she’s caring for her disabled brother full-time: He’s in a state facility! His phone calls to her can’t be that great an inconvenience. (They do not, for example, prevent her from holding down a regular job.) But by the molehills-to-mountains calculus of Love Actually, Linney appears doomed to an early spinsterhood."
"Other filmmakers have attempted to make the big holiday-ensemble movie work after the success of Love, Actually, with both Valentine’s Day and New Years’ Eve trying to lock down a piece of the same territory. Both are atrocious, which only underscores Love Actually’s achievement."
I've not seen New Year's Eve, but say what you like about Valentine's Day, at least it gives its female characters both some narrative agency and happy endings (even if like Love Actually, it's not all about romance, oddly, given the title). Plus it ignores He's Just Not That Into You. The hyperlink genre/narrative structure's essentially now been reduced to supporting these endless quasi-romantic comedies.
"But as people, they are much more complex and compelling than their male counterparts. Take, for example, Sarah (Laura Linney), who has been in love with her drop-dead gorgeous co-worker Karl for “two years, seven months, three days and, I suppose, an hour and 30 minutes”. Their courtship is agonisingly interrupted by the needs of her mentally disabled brother, upon whom she lavishes unrelenting care and attention. This is a woman who has bricked up her own desires and devoted herself entirely to the service of someone who is rarely capable of expressing his gratitude, and it says a great deal about the power of unconditional love."
He ultimately undoes himself here:
"In the end, I suppose it’s about what you demand out of art. We often place needlessly high burdens on individual pieces of entertainment, as if somehow every film should embody all that’s right in the world and always subscribe to our view of the ideal. Or perhaps I’m expecting too little."
Yes, yes you are.
Like much of Curtis's self directed work (I haven't seen About Time yet so this is under advisement) it smugly pretends to be one thing whilst simultaneously doing something else. The Boat That Rocks is a creepy and insidious piece of work which also confirms and to some extent promotes the normalcy of the patriarchy and it's no good saying that as a period piece it simply reflects periodic behaviours. Go watch something like the superb Love Field, then come back and tell that period piece can't both reflect and challenge historical attitudes within a nostalgic construct. That the people involved with The Boat That Rocked let the bed trick scene through, that Curtis wrote and directed it and Nick Frost etc thought it was funny, continues to reflect badly on all of them and the journalists who don't seem to have asked for a justification.
"Although all the strands come together in the airport at the end, it still felt like making 10 separate films. It was a massively difficult edit. The order I originally wrote it in didn't work at all, so we had to reorder it completely. It was a bizarre four-month game of 3D chess."
Which explains why Christmas Eve in the film seems to go on for ever...
"I think there are two flaws common to many of the defenses of Love Actually I’ve seen in comments, on Twitter, and elsewhere on the web. The first is attempting to defend each subplot on an individual basis. I agree that (with one notable exception) any given storyline is perfectly defensible on its own merits. The problem, rather, is the patterns that emerge when you consider the film as a whole. One subplot about an older man wooing a much-younger subordinate? Fine. But three? And on it goes: not one, but two gags (three, if you count the Colin subplot) about how the only possible way a man could overcome heartbreak is with the assistance of one or more supermodels; two storylines in which women (never men) see their romantic lives shattered by obstacles that ought to be surmountable; and, most important, upwards of half a dozen subplots in which characters go directly from initial physical infatuation to (presumed) happily-ever-afters, without remotely bothering to get to know one another in between. These repeated themes are not coincidental."
"Okay. Seriously. Is this Colin Firth storyline actually about human trafficking? Colin Firth shows up in France and this woman just gets dropped off at his house and he "falls in love with her" even though they cannot communicate and the only thing he knows about her is that he's really, really into her butt. But it's "love"! So he just "has" her now! She's "his"! Colin Firth decided they should be together without ever saying a single word to each other, and so that's what happens. Congratulations, now you have a weird stranger who lives in your house and fat-shames you in Portuguese. "Love."
"This entire movie is just straight white men acting upon women they think they "deserve." This entire movie is just men doing things."
Eventually npr released this:
Nope, I won't stop fighting about Love Actually, actually. I mean wow.
"Recently lost your mum to a tragic terminal illness? Dad off the scene? Perhaps you need someone to tell you that mum really loved you and that that love will always shine in the sky for her. Someone like a grief counsel-OHMYGOD LOOK AT THAT FIT GIRL. In another instance of those pesky, sexy Americans coming over the pond and grabbing the attention of unsuspecting Brits, tweenage Joanna gives ten-year-old Sam his first romantic feelings. He then defies airport security to kiss her goodbye with the help of Rowan Atkinson, somehow without being mistaken for a terrorist with a bomb in his underpants and Tasered: it’s a Christmas miracle!"
FilmLove Actually is coming out on blu-ray so you can relive the horror and as an extra sting in the tale it comes with a copy on dvd with less extras, which means its a repressing of the original release and plus one of those Ultraviolet versions of which I'm yet to meet someone who actually uses.
The new extras include "The Storytellers" which should hopefully be a four hour long exposition of what went wrong and just how much more footage ended up on the cutting room floor than the thirty minutes which they deemed necessary to release. Why does Jean Moreau appear as a background artist? What was Emma Thompson doing on stage during the deleted scenes we can see? Was there really a David Morrissey subplot excised in its entirety? How come the entire final portion of the film makes no temporal sense? These are questions were unlikely to receive an answer for in what's otherwise probably going to be yet another Richard Curtis hagiography.
The other BD exclusive is the godawful Robert Palmer parody featuring Bill Nighy.
Seriously, don't. Click here and here to find out why.
[The one redeeming feature is the commentary in which Hugh Grant, as he always does in his commentaries, comes across as a man who hasn't any more shits to give. For years now I've learnt to live with him deciding to make things like Did You Hear About the Morgans? instead of playing the Doctor because I know at some point he'll be sitting behind a microphone taking the piss out of the thing. "This music was just as good on Shakespeare in Love." remains a cherished memory, despite everything.]
"Oh yeah… it’s brilliant. I’m still very proud of it, although it does follow me an awful lot even today (laughs). It’s a lovely thing to be attached with. I think the reason it’s so successful, people love it so much, is it doesn’t try anything more than be a film that was designed to make you feel good. … It’s very easy to watch and it’s a love story, all set around Christmas. It just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that at all and people love that. They sit down every Christmas and I know a lot of guys that love the film and sit down and watch it with their girlfriends or their mothers. It just appeals to a very, very large audience and people seem to love it."
Given, as I described at length here, the potential misogyny, stalkerism and horrendous narrative technique, it remains a bizarre element of modern culture that people do think that it is such a feel good film considering the amount of tragedy wedged in throughout and at the end.
""The ball-breaker in Love, Actually who ditched a new hunk in order to care for her learning-disabled brother."
Which is an interesting interpretation of that storyline by journalist Catherine Shoard. "Ball breaker"? Really? Also it leaves out the reason why she leaves the "hunk". The Cifer's underneath are suitably outraged.
Film The response to my Love Actually post has been surprising (and you should read that first if you haven't yet). Usually the only thing anyone bothers to read here seems to be the Doctor Who posts, or at least the Doctor Who posts about the new series, but my rant, seven years in coming, was retweeted and commented upon quite a lot, which is really pleasing. One of my favourite link tweets was from Jon Arnold:
Which did make me giggle. I hadn't meant to. Not really.
I did ask in the original post if there was anything I missed, and did I, oh did I. As someone called Miranda noticed in the comments:
"I can't believe you glossed over the fact that Karen is perhaps the most deeply unpleasant character of the entire film: she brushes off Daniel during a phonecall literally after his wife has just died because her daughter apparently has something more important to say (ooh, parts in a nativity - clearly that beats a dead wife), and when he understandably gets upset later over his dead wife and his potentially-depressed son, she tells him to 'get a grip, people hate sissies. No-one's ever going to shag you if you cry all the time'. Monstrous behaviour, I felt absolutely no sympathy for her and can totally see why hers is one of the more negative stories."
Having not bothered to watch the film again before writing about it (some things are seared on your memory always), I hadn't remembered Karen's attitude, at least not in this way. My memory was that she was implying that he should move on by letting him hear the bustle of her life. But on reflection her attitude could be construed as lacking in empathy though I wonder if it is that because of something lost in editing, some revelation.
But I would add that I don't think it makes her story some kind of fate/revenge thing in which her husband cheats on her as some kind of karmic payback for her attitude to Daniel. If that is the case it makes the whole film even more loathsome. That said, if her attitude does turn off viewers it's still a black mark because she is one of only a couple of really prominent female roles.
Another sticking point is the PM's attitude to Martine's character. Here's djm4, again from the comments section:
"Admittedly, I've only seen the film once (and, having had much the reaction to it that you did only more so, have no desire to see it again) but from memory, doesn't the Hugh Grant PM basically sack Martine McCutcheon for having the temerity to be sexually harassed by the US President? And yet she still loves him and ends up with him at the end, because nothing says 'romance' like the patriarchy fucking you over."
"IIRC, one possible reading of the PM's actions at that time is that he's deliberately engineered a compromising encounter for the US President in order to get him on the back foot, get some political leverage, and gain the advantage in negotiations. Which makes his actions even more vile."
Again, I don't remember having that reading when I last saw the film, but again given everything else which is going on in those two hours, anything is possible.
The expected viewer attitude to this story is strange. When she is "redistributed", my understanding was that we're supposed to understand the difficulty of power, of not being able to show your feelings, all that gubbins. To an extent, having already seen The American President, which has some of the same gracenotes, we're somewhat primed as to what to expect.
Also, as this brilliant blog post linked to by Lis asks, what kind of message is this storyline telling its audience and especially any teenagers watching. Martine's character is forced to repeatedly apologise for something which was done to her, until Hugh relents and lets her into his life, a move for which she's entirely grateful.
As a wise man once said, "Fuck all that shit, Silent Bob".
Yet, as the author of that post explains, despite all of that, despite the rape overtones of the original encounter and everything her character is put through, until the spell's broken, we're desperate for them to get together. We want to see them kiss, essentially because they're a couple in a romantic comedy.
Which kind of makes you wonder how many romantic comedies are predicated on men behaving badly with the happy ending of the film predicated on the women forgiving them usually because of some grand gesture. When Harry Met Sally is to an extent, though the script is clever enough to give Sally a voice to tell Harry what he did wrong. And slap him.
Now, I'm trying to remember a romcom where this isn't the case, which is tonight's homework, I suppose, if you like. Is there a romcom where these roles are reversed, or where the couple get together because they just do? It's hard. For all its apparently innovation, even Friends With Benefits dips into formula.
"It explores several themes traditionally regarded as 'taboo' in Hong Kong society, in an unusually open, convention-defying way, featuring frequent full-frontal male and female nudity [...] (It) was inspired by real-life events, and opens with a dramatic wedding feast. It tells a variety of stories about love that has gone wrong: a brother and sister in an illicit relationship, a married painter who falls in love with his young male life model, a dance school teacher who is besotted with his senior student, and a lesbian couple, one of whom has role-play paranoia, and is caught in a complex love triangle."
Here's the trailer, It's NSFW. A lot.
Try watching that with "All I Want for Christmas..." playing over the top.
Film There’s a moment and it happens with increasing regularity because apart from American Pie: Band Camp it seems to be the only film ITV2 has the terrestrial rights to, that Twitter decides to collectively watch Love Actually. Often it’s a Sunday night and for about two or three hours (or longer thanks to ITV2+1) my timeline will fill up with people crying over Emma Thompson’s performance or Liam Neeson’s performance or offering their strongly held belief that it’s the greatest romantic comedy of all time.
I hate the film but much of the time I ignore it and carry on reading whatever The New Yorker’s allowing non-subscribers to read or listening to This American Life. But the other night, I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and tweeted, “Love Actually is about middle class white men seducing their employees and the only two female lead characters have unhappy endings.” Which was RTed a few times and led to a stream of replies in agreement with the sentiment and noting a few other issues.
My enmity for the film stems from deciding to study it for my dissertation at university. That dissertation was about hyperlink cinema an idea originally proposed by critic Alissa Quart and popularised by Roger Ebert. As I discovered after watching a couple of dozen examples and a couple of dozen more, what this can be boiled down to, is films in which a bunch of different characters appear in a bunch of different stories which might be thematically linked but are otherwise narratively unconnected, designed to compare and contrast geographical, class, race or gender differences.
Whenever I’ve had to describe all that to people who’ve asked me, I’ve generally resorted to listing the kinds of films which have this kind of structure, such as Short Cuts, Nashville, Magnolia, Crash, Syriana and Love Actually. One of the elements of my dissertation was in pointing out the distinction between these and simpler “ensemble” films like Hannah and Her Sisters or Parenthood where the connections between the characters are made obvious from the start. Hyperlink films go out of their way to surprise the audience in that regard.
It’s important to note at this point that the wikipedia page is a bit of a mess on this point, including stuff like Go, The Player and Pulp Fiction or 21 Grams all of which are wrong as is the main definition which is designed to toss in anything which has a slightly loopy narrative. Go and Pulp Fiction are just old fashioned anthology films without a linking narrator. The Player is a single protagonist story which has lots of surrounding cameos. 21 Grams has a perfectly traditional three act structure with additional flashbacks and flashforwards.
Anyway, in writing the final chapter I had to analyse three films and chose Short Cuts, Don Roos’s Happy Endings which was the film Quart had originally applied to description to and Love Actually because I quite liked it and it seemed to have the interesting angle of attempting to apply genre rules to the format. But having in-between times learnt a few things about film analysis, and after watching the text about five times for the purposes of that analysis, realised it’s a horrible, horrible film. For a start …
It’s not a romantic comedy.
The original advertising for Love Actually trumpets that it’s the “ultimate romantic comedy” and as we’ll see that was Curtis’s original intention. Except somewhere in the writing he’s obviously realised you can’t have nine romcoms happening at the same time because you’ll end up with the same ending over and over and over again, which as anyone whose seen Valentine’s Day will know doesn’t work. At all. Instead he has to resort either through design or happenstance on the usual hyperlink film tactic of “genre artifacting” in other words having essentially different kinds of story in the same film. So Crash has relationship dramas, detective stories and that sort of thing mixed in together.
The stories of author Jamie (Colin Firth) and Aurelia (Lucia Moniz), the PM (Hugh) and Natalie (Martine) and perhaps John (Martin Freeman) and Judy (Joanna Page) are classic romantic comedies, Billy Mac (Bill Nighy) is arguably in a back-stage musical, Mark’s is a tragic romance (perhaps, see below), Colin’s story has all the hallmarks of a sixties sex comedy (the kind that usually starred Robin Asquith rather an Kris Marshall as here), Karen (Emma Thompson) is in a domestic melodrama dealing with the possible infidelity of her spouse and Sarah (Laura Linney) is in the kind of women’s film that Molly Haskell proposes in which a female is stifled from love by responsibilities to her family.
So Love Actually is not just a romantic comedy. Indeed most of these stories, for all the comedic incidents put it closer to the romantic drama typified by something like Life as We Know (the one with Katherine Hiegl) or Love and other Drugs (the one with Jake Gyllenhaal) which have all the hallmarks and advertising or a romcom but due to tragic incident have a greater puffed up thematic interest. See also The Notebook. Interestingly not Four Weddings and a Funeral, because the unfortunate incident whilst the point of the thing, doesn’t become the point of the thing. If you see what I mean. Um, the point is, to say Love Actually is “the ultimate romantic comedy” barely prepares the viewer for how all of the stories conclude.
It’s poorly edited.
Even having done all of that, each of those stories still needs a beginning, middle and an end. Curtis says as much in the script book published a few months later, where he says, having decided on the Short Cuts model, “I thought I’d like to have go at writing that kind of film – to see if it was possible to write a film that with nine beginnings, nine snappy middles and nine ends – without any of the stuff in between.” Except it’s the stuff in between that people watch these films for, the series of mishaps which impede the couple getting together, which in his previous films were weddings or fame or in When Harry Met Sally, friendship.
As the script book later reveals, the first cut of Love Actually was three and a half hours long, which is about average for this kind of film (cf, Magnolia, Short Cuts) but is simply untenable in a romantic comedy which is optimally an hour and a half, or romantic drama which as we’ve discussed this is closest to at between 105 mins or 120 mins depending on tone. The problem is having included all of these stories, Curtis has to include enough incident to make them worthwhile which means the film’s a mess, with repetitions, little in the way of narrative flow and some characters barely given enough screen time to establish themselves.
They’re barely characters.
One of the convenient ways Curtis deals with not having enough time to establish characters is to have his actors reprise their previous work or screen presence, primarily Hugh and Colin who’re essentially playing variations of Charlie and Darcy allowing the writer/director to omit expository information that would usually have been required to make emotional and dramatic sense of each story.
Being critical of a well honed genre tactic is probably slightly harsh, like being annoyed at John Wayne or Meg Ryan for playing John Wayne or Meg Ryan in every film (apart from when they’re deliberately trying act against type). Except in Love Actually it doesn’t just work as an emotion gap filler, it actually seems to be used to fill in holes in the storytelling.
During the film’s set-up very little information is given as to why the PM is not married but sympathy is arguably conferred because of a similar predicament faced by Charlie, the character Hugh Grant played in Four Weddings and a Funeral which gives room for Liam Neeson to give a more formal display of acting to create sympathy in the audience for his character. Ish.
It’s a really poorly edited.
These problems are particularly visible in the climax which is packed with incident and has two barnstorming finales that would not seem out of place in a romantic comedy with just two parallel protagonists, the crosscutting between Jamie’s march to find Aurelia and Sam’s dash through the airport to Joanna being visually unwieldy because their stories are unrelated. Seriously, neither of these stories have anything to do with each other, yet Curtis attempts to connect them with a bit of music and fingers crossed. People shout at Peter Jackson for all of the ends at the close of Return of the King, but he’s at least, in the extended versions, closing out twelve hours worth of narrative. Love Actually’s only two hours long.
But you can really see the torture of the editing room in the last half hour of the film as characters exhibit all kinds of strange behaviour in order for the film to actually end promptly. Colin Firth’s character Jamie apparently enters his family’s home after the radio chart show ends (usually at seven o’clock on a Sunday), and the audience is expected to believe that on Christmas Eve he is then able to flag a taxi to the airport, fly to Marseilles, take a taxi to Aurelia’s village, find her house then the restaurant at which she is employed before proposing to her. Shout all you want about this being a fairy tale like all romantic comedies, but if it was that, as we’ll see, he would have given all of his characters happy endings.
Even more bizarrely, earlier in the climax Martin Freeman’s character Jack drops Joanna Page’s Judy off after their date in the early evening, walks away happy and then the couple are later seen entering the school for the nativity scene, wearing different clothing. Just how long was the original date? Evidently, judging by the deleted scenes on dvd that nativity scene was much, much longer. Emma Thompson’s character gives a speech from the stage. Lord knows what would have led up to that, what’s missing from that escapade. No wonder the ending doesn’t make any sense.
It’s less funny and even a bit creepy the second time around.
Of course nearly all comedies are less funny second time around because the viewer already knows when the jokes are coming, unless its one of those rare examples where the anticipation of the joke is just as funny as the joke itself, or has that even more unique ability to become funnier as the viewer changes/gets older and our understanding of the situation increases.
The problem with Love Actually is because Curtis is trying to be clever he ruins one of the comedy scenes for the viewer the second time around. It’s not necessarily his fault but his lack of awareness is astounding. One of the points of the hyperlink films is the unexpected connection, when the connection between two characters is revealed and illuminates what’s gone before. Think the Cruise and Robards characters in Magnolia.
On the first viewing of Love Actually when Harry (Alan Rickman) is introduced as Sarah’s helpful boss and the object of Mia’s desires it feels rather touching – he seems a kind, perhaps lonely middle aged man with a budding office romance bringing some warmth into his life. Then some fifty minutes into the film, a simple cut from Karen (who is excited about her brother the PM’s diplomatic success) to a reverse shot reveals that Harry is her husband and the spectator was actually watching some potential infidelity.
The moment was a result of editing as Curtis explains: "‘You used to know that Emma was Hugh’s sister earlier in the film and you knew that Alan and Emma were married earlier [..] so you should be thinking about the Heike/Alan story as a fun story, funny let’s see what happens and then you suddenly realise that the flip side of it’s not so good." In other hyperlink films he would have been right. Except, Curtis is supposed to be making a romantic comedy.
At this moment the audience’s reaction to Harry changes, both in the rest of the film and on repeat viewing particularly the later comic scene in which Rufus the shop clerk (played by Rowan Atkinson) gift wraps the necklace, Harry’s gift for Mia is arguably uncomfortable even on first viewing because the humour is predicated on whether the gift will be wrapped before his wife returns so that she doesn’t see his indiscretion.
The spectator is meant to hope that his wife does not catch him even though their sympathy is now firmly with Karen. This may have been another result of the editing process; in the original version of the film Rufus was a Christmas angel supernaturally helping each of the characters – in which case he would have been extending the length of time taken for the gift to be wrapped so that Harry is caught before he does something silly.
Then the Emma Thompson scene happens at the end, an admittedly bravura piece of acting and something we can’t unremember, so when we see the film again, Rickman’s character’s a nasty, morally ambiguous fucker from the start so when he is helping Sarah we wonder what his motive is which has implications for her story going forward. Grr. Ugh.
It’s about middle class white men seducing their employees.
“Most of the picture's half-dozen or so romantic subplots -- which lie scattered about like torn wrapping paper on Christmas morning -- involve workplace dalliances of one kind or another. The ones with the best chances of success all involve an older male boss and a young female subordinate. Jamie (Colin Firth), a writer cuckolded by his own brother, retreats to a villa in the South of France and falls for his Portuguese housekeeper, Aurelia, who speaks no English and who obligingly strips down to her underwear to rescue manuscript pages that have blown into the lake.”
“Harry (Alan Rickman), the head of a nonprofit organization, is besotted with his secretary, Mia (Heike Makatsh), who makes no secret of her attraction to him. The prime minister, moral exemplar of the nation, develops a crush on Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), a member of the Downing Street household staff. When the goatish president of the United States, in London for a state visit, puts the moves on her, the P.M.'s jealousy precipitates a chill in British-American relations (and also makes him a national hero).”
He has more positive things to say about the couple who work as body doubles perhaps because he believes their attraction to be more equal. But that doesn’t stop Curtis only giving us Jack’s reaction to their post-date kiss and not hers, falling into the usual romcom hole of making it all about the man’s reaction and not the woman’s, about him winning her over. But I digress.
Did Curtis know? Did he realise the socio-economic implications of these stories as he wrote them? Directed them? Why did he choose these characters and these situations? His idea is obviously to show love is all around and apparently this includes creepy class distinctions. It’s interesting that he doesn’t have a female PM romancing a male subordinate or a female novelist falling for a male cleaner isn’t it, but then …
Nearly all of the men are creeps anyway.
It is true that the reason Sarah’s romantic story ends badly is because Karl, the man she’s trying to date sods off because of all the interruptions she has because of her brother’s ill health, the impatient fucker. Her unhappy ending is in discovering the man she really fancies is an arsehole. At least she didn’t get stuck with him, I suppose.
Plus as someone replied the other night, “there's no sense in which what Andrew Lincoln's character does isn't stalking.” Unrequited love storylines are one thing, but there’s a strangeness to the way Lincoln’s character has that video and then turns up at Keira’s door essentially telling her that it’s ok that she doesn’t fancy him which is portrayed as an affirmation moment for her.
And what is that Kris Marshall story about anyway? Loveable loser goes to America and meets some walking sex dolls who throw themselves at him? It’s a wish fulfilment fantasy and on top of that makes you wonder exactly how this film is supposed to be for girls. Do they laugh at this loveable “loser”? Grin as he winningly fights against type.
Neeson’s character is given roughly the same gift. Having established that he really fancies Claudia Schiffer, he eventually meets a nice woman who’s played by Claudia Schiffer. #ffs About the only male character given any kind of redemption is Billy Mac and that only happens as part of a bromance story where he realises his manager is the love of his live. #ffs again.
The only two “main” female characters have unhappy endings.
One of the important structural elements of hyperlink dramas is its treatment of characters. There are loads of characters, some are still more or less important story-wise than others. Much of the time in each of the stories there’s still a single main character with a number of supporting characters (some of whom are main characters in their own stories.
In the stories above, Aurelia, Natalie and Mia are all supporting characters. We don’t visit their homes until well into the films and their stories aren’t about them but the blokes who’re falling in love with them. In a traditional single story romcom, these figures tend to be the manic pixie dream girls or unrequited objects of affection.
Now that means the only two leading female characters are Sarah and Karen. As A.O.Scott notices these are also the only two characters whose stories end unhappily:
“The fate of their characters suggests that women who are not young, pert secretaries or household workers have no hope of sexual fulfillment and can find only a compromised, damaged form of love. Perhaps Mr. Curtis wishes to offer this as an insight into contemporary social arrangements; if so, his indifference to the cruelty of those arrangements is truly breathtaking”
Before criticising Curtis too harshly for his apparent lack of balance, it should be noted that he originally wanted Karen’s story to end optimistically but was overruled by his producer Duncan Kenworthy, who felt that the ‘roaring rampage of romance’ required leavening (as enunciated in the supporting material on the dvd). Bastard.
It’s true that male characters do experience tragedy in the film, Daniel’s in particular. But they go on to have happy endings. To not allow either of these figures a modicum of romantic joy in the end, in a romcom, isn’t just shockingly insidious it borders on the m-word.
It also could have been much, much worse. The deleted scenes section of the DVD includes this entire story that was removed about the headmistress of the school tending to her dying lesbian life partner. It’s impeccably acted and heartbreaking:
Except it’s also another potential female main character, another unhappy ending and with a few more cliché’s thrown in for good measure.
Assuming they’re main characters at all.
Objectively from a hyperlink pov it’s also possible to suggest the only actual “main” character is Sarah. Karen until the revelation regarding her husband’s possible infidelity, is essentially a secondary character in her friend Daniel’s story, attending his wife’s funeral and providing him with a shoulder to cry on.
But it goes further than that. Even the scenes between the stand-ins on the movie set are about Jack nervously asking out Judy – at the end of their date, the audience views Jack’s reaction to the kiss – but not how Judy feels about it behind her closed front door, the man’s reaction again.
It has a stunning lack of diversity.
The only two prominent black characters, Tony (Abdul Salis) and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are facilitators in other stories; Tony is the doubting friend of Colin and the assistant director on the film set who brings Jack and Judy together; Peter’s wife Juliet is the target of his friend Mark’s affection. They don’t have their own stories.
There’s no reason any of the characters in this film couldn’t be non-white. Chiwetel Ejiofor could just as well have played the Neeson character or the Firth. But Love Actually is just another example of a film in which non-white actors find themselves marginalized into particular types of roles.
This is changing, but not much. At this point I can’t remember a “mainstream” uk romcom about non-white characters that isn’t specifically trying to make Curtis’s own point about love being all around, where the characters just happen to be black or Asian. I’m sure there must be one.
It gets worse. On the dvd are some deleted shots in which the poster behind Sarah in the fair-trade office comes to life and as Curtis describes ’two old women carrying a heavy burden of sticks [..] they’re not talking about the problems with the land they’re talking about husbands and children and boyfriends and all that kind of stuff’. Oh purlees. As Black Book (which has an embed) says in its analysis of the deleted scenes:
"The idea was to skew the typically "Western" portrayal of Africa, although Curtis kind of reinforces it by displaying the whole "joy in poverty" thing usually seen in the Facebook albums of your well-meaning friends who went on mission trips or whatever there. See, they're poor, and their crops are dying, but it's okay, because they have each other, and that's all you need. Except when you live in an agrarian society and... anyway, the scene is cute and all, but it doesn't present Kenya (or the unfortunate blanket, continent-as-one-country sort of perception of Africa) particularly differently and would have only really worked if Curtis had then gone all over the world to find other stereotypical, It's A Small World-ish love stories to complement it. But then the movie would have been, like, three hours and..."
Other random crimes:
According to the wikipedia (though I’m not prepared to watch this thing again and check) Jeanne Moreau is seen briefly waiting for a taxi at the Marseille Airport suggesting she had a longer sequence of scenes which were cut. The opening tasteless 9/11 referencing sequence which Will Self described as: “the most grotesque and sick manipulation of a cinema audience's feelings that I've ever seen since Leni von [sic] Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will'.” The US version of the film has a “Sugababes” track replaced by one from Kelly Clarkson. No actually, that’s not such a bad thing.
Three redeeming features:
The directors commentary on the dvd in which Hugh turns up late and takes the piss out of the thing all the way through, piercing Curtis's piety. The moment where Nighy can't remember which is Ant or Dec. The Joni Mitchell scene which is an amazing piece of acting from Emma, even if you don't agree with the story that it's supporting. Kind of makes you wish Curtis had simply made a film about her character's story and not passed it off as a rom-com.
In Conclusion.
I’ve probably overwritten this and the original tweet probably captures everything much more succinctly but I thought it was worth finally putting into words. Or into words again. It’s a ghastly, ghastly film, and even ten years later exemplifies a particular type of filmmaking which gives the viewer some stars and amusing situations while subliminally, unconsciously or no, confirms or emphasises some of societies least digestible elements.
Curtis would go on to make The Boat That Rocks, a film that’s even more grotesque with its astonishingly ill-conceived “bed trick” scene which has the distinction of somehow making the viewer hate Nick Frost because he agreed to act in it apparently without noticing the psycho-sexual implications. But I’ve thankfully only had to watch that once and even then I wasn’t happy about it. But Love Actually? I feel like I’m watching it every time it’s on ITV2, even when I’m not.
