Heartwarming

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2004)

Love, so the song tells us, is a many splendored thing. It would seem that Richard Curtis' goal for "Love, Actually" is to embrace all the splendors of mankind's most basic and universal emotion. The subject is one that can't really be covered in a single film (even at two and a quarter hours, Curtis only skims the surface), but you can't blame him for trying, especially when so much of what he does put up on screen is touching and entertaining.
The film, which takes place in the weeks before Christmas, isn't a liner story so much as it is a series of vignettes. The characters are all loosely connected to each other, but what really matters is how they connect to their respective partner(s). Among the various ages and stages of relationships: a bachelor PM (Hugh Grant)who's smitten with a staffer, a married couple (Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson) shaken by the specter of infidelity, a heartbroken author (Colin Firth) who flees to the Continent, and a widower (Liam Neeson) who copes with his stepson's first love while coming to terms with his own loss. There's not enough space to detail all the talent found here, but two performances particularly impressed me: Thompson's Karen, who carefully masks the agony she feels at her husband's straying eye, and Bill Nighy as aging rock legend Billy Mac. A broken cynic in a crowd of romantics, he provides a sort of connecting thread throughout the film.
With so many characters and ideas in play, "Love Actually" can't help but feel as crowded as a mall on Christmas Eve. Among those almost lost in the crush are Kiera Knighley as a newlywed bride, and a couple who meet while working as body doubles for a series of sex scenes (the shots of the two characters engaging in casual conversation while striped naked and in compromising positions are some of the film's funniest moments, but the characters never fully emerge). But it's hard to ignore the charm of a film that's sentimental without being sappy, realistic without being brutal. And if even Nighy's world-weary loner isn't completely immune to love's charm, who am I to deny it?