Love Actually

Yes, this is going to be another post related to Christmas, but I can’t help it, I really love the holiday season. And I have to start blogging more often, so I figured I’ll post about anything that comes to my mind. This time it’s going to be about one of my favorite Christmas movies: Love Actually. It’s a British love comedy from 2003 and it stars many famous British actors and actresses such as Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman and many more. It tells ten different love stories which are all connected somehow and it is set mainly in London. The film starts five weeks before Christmas and counts down the time until the holidays week by week. 

One of my favorite scenes of the whole movie is the very first one. It shows people welcoming their arriving family members or friends at Heathrow Airport. They are hugging, kissing and laughing. A voiceover by Hugh Grant (who plays the Prime Minister of Great Britain in the movie) talks about how he always thinks of this happiness and love in the arrival hall of Heathrow Airport when he “gets gloomy with the state of the world”. He goes on talking about different kinds of love – between parents and children, old friends or lovers – and says that if you look for it “love actually is all around”. 

This intro leads to the main part of the film, which consists of ten different love stories. For example David, who just became Prime Minister, falls in love with his secretary. His sister Karen is afraid her husband Harry is having an affair. Karen’s best friend Daniel recently lost his wife and on top of that his stepson is in love for the first time and needs a plan to charm his girl. Then there is Mark, who is in love with his best friend’s wife Juliet. Or Jamie who discovers his girlfriend has been cheating on him with his brother and goes to France, where he ends up falling in love with his housekeeper Aurelia, who only speaks Portuguese and doesn’t understand him. 

Well, I could go on, but I think you get the idea. I admit, if you read my short summary it sounds like a ridiculously cheesy romantic movie, but it’s actually not as bad as I made it seem. Sure, the main topic of the movie is definitely love and I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anybody who can’t stand romantic comedies in general, but I think everybody who likes to relax while watching a not so serious movie from time to time would enjoy it. It contains a lot of humor and the various different stories help keeping the movie dynamic and entertaining, so it doesn’t become boring. The characters are also very likeable, so you keep hoping for a happy end for all of them. But – and this is also one of the things I really like about the film – not all of them get their happy end. I like that, because as we know in life we don’t always get what we want and not every love story ends well. 

Another reason to love the movie is that it also has a great soundtrack with some slow songs, some faster tunes and some Christmas hits, which set the mood for the holiday season. One of the “best” Christmas songs ever came out of Love Actually, namely a song called Christmas Is All Around sung by the unsuccessful singer Billy Mack in the movie. And if you think the title sounds vaguely familiar, then you are right: It’s a (very bad) cover of the song Love Is All Around by The Troggs, later covered by Wet Wet Wet. If you want to have a listen, here it is: 

In conclusion, I love the movie because it always makes me happy and puts me in a Christmas mood, so if you happen to be not happy or in a Christmas mood you might give it a try!