“Love Actually”: Every year I fever and cry along (Opinion)

Opinion

Christmas classics
Despite kitsch and sexism: Why I love the film “Love Actually”.

Nine different relationships are portrayed in Love Actually – each worse than the last. Nevertheless, our author feverishly and sobs along with the strange characters time and time again.

“When I feel depressed about the global political situation, I always think of the arrivals hall at Heathrow Airport. It is commonly said that we live in a world full of hatred and greed. But that is not true. On the contrary, it seems to me that we are everywhere Love surround. Often it’s neither particularly glamorous nor spectacular, but it’s always there.”

It’s those first lines of “Love Actually” that get my inner Christmas elf singing every year.

When the film came out in 2003, I was nine years old. Since then I have seen him at least 20 times. Every year I am fascinated by a different love story. Every year I dance through 10 Downing Street in front of the screen with British Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant). Every year my heart breaks when Karen (Emma Thompson) is betrayed by her husband (the great Alan Rickman). But of course my view of the film has changed over the years.

I’m not ashamed to indulge in this kitsch. But I don’t find the sexist jokes, such as those made about the bodies of women who are supposedly too fat, funny. In fact, they annoy me immensely. Some scenes of the Prime Minister or the bumbling would-be womanizer who travels to the USA to pick up American women also seem difficult to me.

Admittedly, “Love Actually” has aged poorly…

But “Love Actually” is also a child of its time – the film would (hopefully) look completely different in 2023 than it did 20 years ago. And precisely because the film is so beautifully old, I can view it from a different distance than films from today. Then it’s good for me, as absurd as it may sound. Two things in particular make me forgiving and allow me to enjoy the film again this year.

For one thing, director Richard Curtis regrets the sexist jokes and lack of diversity in his films today. At a recent event, he said that “calling someone chubby” might once have been funny. He wouldn’t do that today. At the event he was interviewed by, of all people, his daughter Scarlett, a feminist author, who questioned him in a very refreshing way.

On the other hand, the ensemble of “Love Actually” is simply great. With Emma Thompson, Keira Knightly, Colin Firth and Liam Neeson, the film could hardly be better cast. It is the actors who give depth to the sometimes flat or sometimes completely exaggerated characters and make them people with whom I empathize with from the bottom of my heart. In a review of “Beyond the Boxset,” author John Lucas puts it succinctly: “No one but Hugh Grant could have made this nonsense fly.” And yes, the “nonsense” is flying for me – even for the 21st time!

…but I still love the film

That’s why I love the film to this day: “Love Actually” distracts me and puts me in the Christmas spirit. He makes me laugh at the cynical rock star Billy Nighy, at Rowan Atkinson, the world’s slowest salesman, and of course at the lobster at the nativity play.

“Love Actually” gives me hope and warmth in a world situation that sometimes just makes you want to despair. A world situation in which my head really, really needs a film that allows me to just switch off. At least for 135 minutes. And at the latest when Dido sings “Here with me”.

Sources: “Love Actually”, Beyond the box set“Guardian“