Few films elicit the sort of cultish devotion that surrounds Love Actually. Here we are, on the year of its 10th anniversary, still arguing about which storyline is the most unrealistic, whose character is deserving of the most sympathy, and whether the relationship between Billy Mack and his manager was anything more than a bromance.
It should be noted that the British themselves seem entirely uninterested in these debates; they regard Love Actually as something akin to the embarrassing uncle who emerges out of the ether for Christmas lunch. But in the antipodes, the fascination grinds on. This is a film to which I have flocked quasi-religiously each Christmas Eve since its inception. Many visit family, some go to church, others help at soup kitchens; I watch Love Actually.
This undying love is not entirely universal, however. In a country still afflicted by tall poppy syndrome, this cinematic masterpiece has generated its fair share of opponents. I never thought I would have to defend it against charges of sexism and misogyny, but when challenged on this by folks who might have a better claim to authority on the subject (the editor of this piece among them), I thought it necessary to reconsider. It was also an excellent excuse for an extra pre-season screening.
The central accusation which is often hurled at the movie is that Love Actually is “Christmas for dudes” – wherein the women get a raw deal, and the men steal the show. That wouldn’t be unusual in ensemble casts: think Ocean’s Eleven, The Usual Suspects or The Godfather.
One might argue, plausibly, that the film’s male characters are more fun and reap the script’s big laughs. Bill Nighy opens proceedings as the washed-up rock star searching for a comeback at any price, and plays the jester throughout. Hugh Grant is the improbable prime minister we all secretly want: a hesitant, self-deprecating bachelor who dances down the stairwell of Number 10 to the Pointer Sisters. Colin Firth gets chuckles for his clumsy Portugese marriage proposal and Rowan Atkinson enjoys a comic cameo as an obsessive department store gift-wrapper.
Martine McCutcheon, who plays Grant’s love interest Natalie, endears herself to the prime minister by swearing repeatedly at their first encounter. Judy (Joanna Page) and John (Martin Freeman) get equal billing as the awkward, squeaky-clean amateur porn actors who make small-talk about the traffic while engaging in simulated anal sex. But by and large, the female characters aren’t funny.
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.
Heike Makatsch plays the sexually suggestive Mia, who is rapaciously intent on sleeping with her married boss (Alan Rickman). Her lack of subtlety can be affronting – after all, good girls don’t do the Basic Instinct leg-cross in the office. But Mia isn’t a good girl, and I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Those who would condemn her as a heartless home-wrecker need to ensure they’re not just projecting their disgust at a woman who is unapologetically sexual.
The emotional crux of the film is Rickman’s wife, Emma Thompson. When she opens her Christmas present and finds it’s not the gold jewellery she had discovered in her husband’s jacket, her worst suspicions are confirmed. Not wanting to fall apart in front of the children, she excuses herself and sheds, just briefly, the tears of the cheated. Then it’s back to playing happy families.
It’s never clear whether Rickman bedded Mia, nor whether he and Thompson fully reconcile. Rickman admits he has been “a classic fool”. “Yes, but you’ve also made a fool out of me,” Thompson replies. “You’ve made the life I lead foolish too.” It might be the film’s best scene. Earlier in the film Thompson dwells on the pedestrian nature of her life as a wife and mother, and to have her dignity in that role undermined is to strip her of meaning, of seriousness.
Perhaps leaving him would have been the sign of female strength some feel is missing from Love Actually. But she isn’t seen to forgive him either. It is deliberately left vague and open-ended. And that, I think, makes Thompson’s character the most powerful in the film.
Director Richard Curtis awards the men with laughs, but endows the women with depth. The male characters are likeable but pathetic, bumbling their way to happiness, while the women sometimes get spurned but always with honour and poise. Perhaps this does reinforce some preconceptions about how men and women are expected to behave. But I wouldn’t say the film objectifies or maligns its female characters – quite the opposite.
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.
And maybe it’s by virtue of those low expectations that I continue to find this movie so compelling. We can’t all share the lofty, moralistic benchmarks preached by the Atlantic’s film critic Christopher Orr. Yes of course the film is unrealistic, of course it’s shallow, and of course it doesn’t teach us very much about love (other than that it’s all around).
But it does teach us that you have to try, that you have to know what you want and pursue it, and most of all, that love is something worth pursuing. Tempting though it often is to seek the false comforts of cynicism and snootiness, choosing to have an open mind can be the best Christmas gift of all.