Love Actually
I just watched a favorite DVD again. Hugh Grant in ‘Love Actually’. A montage of love stories set at Christmas Season in London, rated ‘R’ for nudity and some mild language.
Hugh Grant plays an ‘aging’ Prime Minister of England, and falls in love with a girl on his staff. Hugh’s sister, Emma Thompson, endures a crisis when her husband strays with a girl at his work. Jaime drops his wandering girl friend, and falls for a girl that only speaks Portuguese (Jaime doesn’t), and cleans the cottage he rents while writing a crime novel. Mark is in love with his best friend’s bride, and hides his feelings. Daniel mourns his recently departed wife, and helps his step son ‘get the shit kicked out of him by love’ — the boy has a crush on a popular girl at school. Judy and Jack are stand-ins for nekkid sex scenes on a movie set, and find they enjoy chatting with each other. Karl and Sarah are interrupted in the midst of an intimate moment by a phone call from Sarah’s disturbed brother (committed to an institution), and they may or may not actually get together. Oh, and the aging rock star trying to get his ‘Christmas is all around’ to be the Christmas Number One of the year in Britain.
In ‘Love Actually’ (is all around) I think my favorite scene is Jaime, proposing in a Portuguese restaurant to the lovely Aurelia, with father, sister, and much of the neighborhood standing behind him. My favorite story is about Jack and Judy chatting about going for a drink, about traffic, and ’stuff’ while naked, moving to imitate sexual acts, and in the midst of a filming crew. In both cases, the characters obviously observe their partner as a person, not an image. For Jack and Judy, the nekkid stand-ins, it is clear that the attraction is Judy’s smile, and how Jack ignores the skin Judy is showing to talk to the girl sharing the scene with him.
Powered by Qumana
October 12th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
You forgot about Colin and the American girls.
Love Actually is also one of my favoritist movies of all time. I have always wondered though: did Emma Thompson and her husband get back together or is she just greeting him at the airport (at the end)?
October 13th, 2006 at 12:51 am
Nio, no, I didn’t forget Colin ‘with the big knob’. I thought that part was shallow and no actual ‘love’ involved. Nothing was shown to imply anything beyond an intense but brief encounter. Colin’s shallowness is quite a counterpoint to the character development and growing attraction of Jack and Judy.
I love Judy’s father asking Jack how they met — that Judy was quite mysterious, ‘Umm!’
And I think Emma did take him back. She tells him ‘Good to have you back’, and leaves the arrival area with him. Her expression and body language are all comfortable and secure. Besides, we don’t know for sure that anything really happened beyond the gift necklace and fantasies. In the out-takes in the DVD there is a deleted scene showing Mia planning to seduce her boss — quite a deliberate and amoral piece of work.