Very Kitsch

Rating: 4/10 (7 May 2009)

Please be indulgent with my English. My first comment here.
First time I saw this movie, I was enthused. This idea to show the exit at the airport arrival and show the love behind all these people and at the end the same picture of people cuddling and kissing themselves is really moving: love is everywhere! A nice message! So I understood the enthusiastic reviews out here on IMDb.com quite well.
But now I watched this film for a second time, it is part of my DVD collection, and I was really shocked. Some films win, watching them more times. Some lose. "Love Actually" is one of the biggest Hollywood crap and pretentious kitsch I have in my collection.
Some reasons: the music is just terrible. It is like ketchup in every dish. The light is producing artificial studio atmosphere. To the figures of the film: Hugh Grant is charming, but always the same Hugh Grant in every film. This time as a English Prime Minister, and sorry, such a character with his mannerism in this position is only ridiculous. And these jokes about Natalie's (Martine McCutcheon) elephant thighs are very cheap and even not true. But the most terrible in this film is this sort of little adult in the body of a 13? years old boy. He is sitting there on papa's sofa, mother just died and he has nothing better to do, than to wine about a beautiful comrade in school, to whom he does not dare to declare his "love". He is speaking with the words of a Hollywood film scenarist, and father desperately wants to enter his children room, but does not venture it, because there is written with chalk "keep out!" on a slate. Is it like that, filmmakers are raising their children in Hollywood? Poor children! Poor America! And when the girlfriend - sixteen years old? - is singing in the school "Christmas!"-celebration, imitating eroticism from show biz in television she grew up with, it is the summit of embarrassment in this film.
OK, there are really good actors: first of all Emma Thompson. Great artist, great personality! I liked also the couple of writer and the housekeeper lady from Portugal. The English-Portuguese Dialogs are witty. Lúcia Moniz (playing Aurelia) would merit a carrier, but looking on IMDb.com she is not doing well. What a pity! Also the old Rocker was a great pleasure to watch. I love films in mosaic technique. My answer to this film would be the films of Cédric Klapisch, which use mostly this technique. Watch out for "Paris", 2008 and "L'Auberge espagnole", 2002. And one of my favorite films in this technique is from Danièle Thompson: "Fauteuils d'orchestre", 2007.