Love's labour's won
Have you ever passed away your waiting hours, breathing the air of love, permeating the wide spaces of automated, impersonal airports? British screen- writer Richard Curtis has, and discovered the romance within the chaotic mayhem and buzzing pandemonium in them. He observed the many faces of love, manifested in every corner -- the longing, the tenderness, the expectation and anticipation, the endless embraces of unions, reunions and disunions. It was a labour of love that has paid dividends at the box-office for this skilled writer. The public is already familiar with his highly successful British comedies, having written three in recent years, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary. Love, Actually however, is his debut as director, and judging from audience responses, it will not be his last. He has assembled the cream of the crop of UK actors, as his insurance policy, who elegantly pour out the British charm as deliciously quenching as a perfectly brewed hot cup of tea.
Curtis opens and closes his two-hour-plus film with dozens of airport scenes, as he unfolds his distinguished cast of 22 characters and nine romances, that interweave during Christmas-time in London. Oozing with sugar and spice, sweeter than a holiday bonbon, no lovesick stone has been left unturned for our viewing pleasure. He has filled the air with every aspect of love, platonic, parental, sibling, forbidden and unrequited, not to mention boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl -- before she boards a plane at an airport. He flaunts the inevitable happy endings for widowers, lovesick children, tempted husbands, stiff upper-lipped wives, lonely politicians, lonelier writers, and even certain kinds of cell-phone addicts, all neatly wrapped in gilded foil and satin ribbon for a dainty Christmas package.
The London air, heavy with love, floats from Heathrow Airport to 10 Downing Street, where the hopelessly, helplessly romantic Hugh Grant resides. Dapper Grant brings his delectable allégresse and his clipped breezy charm which won him instant stardom and a permanent place in our hearts in Four Weddings, another Curtis creation. His seductive persona, "a quaint cocktail of elocution, dourness, glamour, timing, self-awareness, intelligence, misanthropy, immediate and constant self-deprecation and gleeful good humour", realises with a sinking heart that, on his first day on the job, he has fallen for Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) the unlikely full-figured caterer responsible for bringing his tea and his biscuits. "Oh no, that is so inconvenient," laments the PM. Hugh has that "Cary Grantish ability to seem bemused by his own charm and so much self-confidence, that he plays the British prime minister as if he only took the role, just to be a good sport", writes critic Roger Ebert.
For tear-jerking moments, no one can beat Oscar Winner Emma Thompson, who plays the PM's sister. A Christmas Eve scene showcases her intelligence and warmth, her talent for comedy, pathos and punch, all the while breaking our hearts as the stalwart wife of a straying husband, Alan Rickman. Rickman plays boss to Laura Linney's tongue-tied Sara, an American living in London, pining away for a co-worker, but too shy to admit it, while he too loves her, and is equally too shy to express it. Her concern for a mentally ill brother, gets in the way of their romance.
Other love vignettes are provided by Andrew Lincoln in a rather awkward relation as best man, hopelessly enamoured by his best friend's bride, the luminous Keira Knightley. More plaisirs d'amour find a young shy couple whispering tender sweet nothings while they perform lewd love scenes, totally naked in front of a camera as stand-ins. A sexually starved lonely waiter is convinced that he will only find his deliverance if he travels to Wisconsin, USA. Only there will he find the one gorgeous woman who will fall for him and his British accent. He does ... and she does.
Liam Neeson is touchingly tender as the recently widowed step-father coaching his precocious 11 year old step-son in matters of the heart and the cravings of puppy-love. In a surprise appearance Billy Bob Thornton is a reprehensible Bush/Clintonian/US president; and a far too brief cameo features Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean, and the fumbling priest in Four Weddings...) as a fastidious gift-wrapper with a fetish for ribbons.
And then there is the cool and composed Mr Darcy, concealing his flaming passion within, actor Colin Firth, who swept British lasses off their feet in the BBC's television version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and again in a more modern version opposite Renée Zelwegger in Bridget Jones's Diary. Firth is the bleeding novolist who catches his girl-friend in bed with his brother, and escapes to his cottage in France to recuperate. There he falls in love with his Portuguese housekeeper. Neither understands the other's language. She speaks no English, he speaks no Portuguese. But what's a language barrier between two lovers!
The popular theme song of Four Weddings Love is All Around, is transformed here into a commercialised Christmas song, recorded by an old jaded rock star, Bill Nighy who walks away with the movie in his heartwarming moment of genuine affection. This old- timer is so blatantly candid about the trashy quality of his record, the more obscenities he hurls at disc jockeys and fans, the more the British public sends sales of his record zooming to the top of the charts.
An overgrown Harry Potter, the grey-haired bespectacled 47 year-old Curtis transports his smart and witty writing to his first directorial screen effort. While his greatest asset may be the top-notch cast, he has the skill to deftly sew together his patchwork of winsome romances and sub-plots, into a pleasing tapestry of real life's intrinsic truths. He pays attention to every detail, "like a great big box of chocolate, with all the best bits tucked inside".
Love, Actually is nine movies rolled into one, stocked with details of every day anguish, balancing so many competing story lines, bringing an adult sensibility to mainstream romantic comedy. Although his message is eternally upbeat, he always involves a little sadness, as in Four Weddings. He has an acute sense of our aspirations and desparations, as when the suave prime minister sings carols to a bunch of bratty children on Christmas Eve, or when the devastated wife decides to get on with her life, her marriage and bringing up her children... Says Firth: "Every single discerning person on this film, felt we were in danger of drowning in syrup if we did not end with something substantial. The bottom line is that it completely wins you over ... it sweeps you up."
Given the huge success of Four Weddings and Notting Hill music is a major player in Curtis' films: "Music is really an important linking device to keep the emotion going as you cut from tale to tale, what unites the characters rather than what divides them," explained Curtis in a BBC interview.
Curtis longs to please: "I don't understand not wanting to please an audience." Some may disagree... The New York Times calls it "an indigestible Christmas pudding", but the public as well as most critics find it highly palatable and satisfying.
Wearing its heart on its sleeve with irresistible British charm, "you'd have to be an Ebenezer Scrooge not to walk out smiling."
I for one, need those smiles, and will be the first in line when this delectable Christmas cornucopia comes our way.
A good dose of love never hurt anyone -- much!
'You must sit down' says Love,
'and taste my meat,'
So I did -- sit and eat.George Herbert (1595-1633)
C a p t i o n :
Hugh Grant, the new Prime Minister
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 20 - 26 November 2003 (Issue No. 665)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/665/pe2.htm