With Love Actually, director Richard Curtis shows that life is full of small moments of love and affection.
We know Richard Curtis as the screenwriter of Blackadder, Bean, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and various other TV series and films. Curtis learned the intricacies of directing from directors such as Mike Newell and Roger Michell, with the result that Love Actually works just as smoothly as the romantic comedies for which he m wrote the screenplay. Curtis was of course not alone: Working Title, responsible for many major British film hits, has always managed things perfectly from a production point of view.
Yet it is no small feat that Curtis delivers here, because Love Actually is the Magnolia of 'romcoms'. The screenplay contains nine different storylines, most of which intersect at some point, and no less than twenty-two characters relevant to the plot. Excess can easily harm in such a case, but the film feels like a unit that never gets out of balance.
September 11
The fact that Curtis can choose the best British actors also works in the film's favor. However sketchy some characters are developed, it's not difficult to embrace them. Hugh Grant as the bold Prime Minister who puts the Americans on their feet and falls in love with a working-class maid. Emma Thomspon as his sister, who is painfully confronted with her husband's potential adultery. Alan Rickman as her husband who, to his own surprise, finds out that he is not impervious to other charms. And Liam Neeson as a grieving widower, forced by fate to continue raising his stepson alone.
Some storylines are played as pure comedy, such as the ugly boy who travels to Wisconsin because he is convinced that the girls there will immediately fall for his British accent. And vice versa: where in Four Weddings Curtis evoked a melancholy undertone of loss by mixing in that famous 'funeral' with all the weddings, here he lets a character miss the chance of a great romantic love, because this person has to take care of someone else who is still there.
While the film ends on a shamelessly romantic note, it's clear that not all characters in Love Actually get what they hope for or feel they are entitled to. Nevertheless, Curtis captivatingly shows that life, if you pay attention, is full of little moments of love and affection. In any case, I will look at the arrivals hall at London Heathrow with different eyes after seeing this film.
Curtis takes a big risk by starting his film with a reference to September 11, 2001. If the whole thing had become bogged down in false sentiment, it would have been unforgivable. But Love Actually works. Not only because Curtis sincerely believes that love is more important than money or power, but mainly because he has the talent to translate his feelings into astute dialogue and charming characters. "Let's go and get the shit kicked out of us by love", one of them says somewhere. Based on this movie, you can't help but conclude that this is damn good advice.