Eight London couples try to deal with their relationships in different ways. Their tryst with love makes them discover how complicated relationships can be.
WHAT I LIKED: Richard Curtis catches a lot of flak for being a director who makes films shot like commercials almost exclusively about middle-class white folks. That's hardly untrue, and it certainly doesn't make his work edgy or cool, but it equally doesn't make it invalid or unworthy either. There's room for all kinds of stories in cinema, including unbelievably cheesy, optimistic ones about the fact that *love and humanity is everywhere, even if we're all a bit flawed and strange.*
Exploring eight couples (lovers, kids, friends, and married folks) from Downing Street (yes, really) to Main Street (ok, we never really get beyond the leafy suburbs) may be a corny way of translating his well-worn central theme. But 'Love, Actually,' makes it work because, as ever with Curtis, his characters are not only wonderfully portrayed, but - often unlike their American equivalents - they're also written brilliantly as flawed, complex human beings.
We have Alan Rickman as an unfaithful husband buying a Christmas present for a young woman at work to the upset of his wife (played brilliantly by Emma Thompson in that infamous bedroom scene), but they both try to move on together for sake of their kids and their years of marriage. Then there's a failed, narcissistic pop star (Bill Nighy) who wants to spend Christmas partying with the stars, but ends up spending it with the only man he ever loved - his lonely, disheveled manager (Gregor Fisher) - and there's even a similar storyline for the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) who initially acts like an ass towards the assistant that he fancies (Martine McCutcheon), but eventually lets what he sees as his professional obligations go to rush to her family home at Christmas. There are countless more storylines in which the characters range from wholesome (Laura Limey's Sarah who struggles to find time for relationships whilst looking after her brother) to extremely questionable (Thomas Brodie-Sangster's jack the lad character is cringe at the very least) but they all involve arcs that resolve in one way or another with them finding love despite their flaws.
That's a heart-warming message for any film to have, and for my money, it makes for a perfectly imperfect Christmas film.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: A few of the storylines could probably have been dropped and not impacted the emotional impact or the thematic core of the film, and it is certainly true that if you watch with your cynical hat on, a lot of the characters have their fair share of issues...
VERDICT: The characters may range from imperfect to downright questionable, but Richard Curtis' theme about love and shared humanity trumping all makes 'Love Actually,' a truly heart-warming Christmas film.
