There’s so much right about this multi-tiered plum cake of a romantic comedy that it would be better to begin with the little I didn’t like about ’’Love Actually’’.
The film has too many characters swarming the svelte scenario, jostling one another and our attention as they shop, fight, love and hate each other in the Christmas season. Curtis’ mordant romance zips in and out of ruffled lives.
And now, I’ve run out of negative comments on Curtis’ cocky, caustic and captivating movie debut. If you’ve seen what he wrote in ’’Four Weddings And A Funeral’’ and ’’Notting Hill’’, you would have an idea about what to expect here.
The absolutely endearing Hugh Grant, for one.
Playing the British prime minister, obviously modelled on the suave Tony Blair, Grant is in great shape, breaking into a jog to the irresistible beats of the Pointer Sister when he falls in love with his maidservant (Martine McCutheon).
Far fetched? But why! Why can’t love strike in unlikely places? Why can’t people reach across impossible barriers? That’s the enchanting essence of Curtis’ film.
Hence, a writer (Colin Firth) heads to rural France and falls head-over-heels in love with his Portuguese maid (Lucia Moniz), heads back home to learn Portuguese and makes it just on time during Christmas to propose to her.
A solemn and mature eight-year old (played wonderfully by the solemn and mature Thomas Sangster) announces to his bemused and concerned lately widowed father (Liam Neeson) that he’s in love...
A decadent, cynical but still passionate singer rediscovers chart-success and also that his faithful manager is the love of his life...
Two porn stars heaving and mock-moaning into each other on-camera discover love (I wish this little lust-into-love story had been left out, it takes away from the film’s all-encompassing audience profile).
Every little story is a full script in itself. Like the young woman over-burdened with family responsibilities (Laura Linney) who can’t confess her love.
Hers is the most poignant love story of the lot, somewhat marred by a jarring sequence where she finally falls into bed with her lover-boy, only to have her mentally ill brother call persistently on her cell phone.
Another strand in this stylishly layered romance that doesn’t work concerns a young horny London waiter who rushes to the US for some serious sex. The denouement of this search-for-gratification is absolutely dead-end.
But then that’s only a minor failing in a film that drops a blessed blizzard of romantic yearnings on our hungry souls.
The cast is first-rate, particularly Grant, Billy Bob Thornton (as a seductive and rakish Bill Clinton-styled US president) and little Sanger.
Emma Thompson’s breakdown scene when she discovers that the necklace in her husband’s pocket is for another woman, exhibits her range quite effectually.
It’s amazing how every actor in this jam packed tale finds an articulate space for self assertion. Right on top of the list of star-actors is Billy Nighy as the wry pop singer who gets up in the middle of a television interview to flash his unmentionables in the anchor’s face.
Curtis balances such bawdy moments with the dewdrop tenderness of love’s little vignettes. Parts of the film (for instance the porn stars discovering love) are outrageously unbelievable. But the incredulity supplements rather than diminishes the residue of charming naturalness.