[Bill Nighy as ageing rock star Billy Mack]
Chris and I would often watch Love Actually at Christmas. I thought I’d continue this tradition yesterday so, after lunch, I lit the fire and settled down with Ted, popped the DVD into the slot and clicked PLAY.
Mmmmm.
I suppose I should have anticipated the tsunami of tears that flowed over the next 90 minutes, but I didn’t. Poor old Captain Midnight got so used to me bursting into sobs that after the first three or four times, instead of leaping onto my lap to sort me out, he stayed on the sofa across the room, briefly raised his head, opened one eye just to make sure I wasn’t about to stop breathing, and went straight back to sleep.
It’s easy to be sniffy about Richard Curtis films: middle-class characters (mostly white and mostly straight) falling in and out of love in posh surroundings. But, with a willing suspension of disbelief, both the beauty and pain of love are there to be relished. Love Actually has joy and passion and grief and loss in it; and love of many kinds from first love to last love; likely and unlikely couples are matched in requited and unrequited love. And not just romantic love: friendships, families and foolish fancies also have their place.
Chris especially liked the flawed Harry – Karen (Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson) pairing and Billy Mack’s (Bill Nighy) unlikely love for his manager Joe (Gregor Fisher). Over the years I’ve been touched by the plights of all of the film’s love struck and lovelorn characters but yesterday, inevitably I suppose, I identified most strongly with the recently widowed Dan (Liam Neeson) both in his obvious love for his late wife and – I confess – in the fact that his misery diminishes somewhat when Claudia Schiffer takes a fancy to him.
The scene I find most moving though, is the one that both opens and closes the film: dozens of people greeting each other in an airport arrival lounge. The candid shots were taken by hidden cameras (with permission later given by subjects for their images to be shown). The joy on people’s faces reminds me of what a dear friend said to me the other day: “Ultimately, everyone is loveable.”
This morning, I woke up thinking of Chris and with a song going around in my head. It wasn’t used in the film as it happens, though I think it should have been. Happy Christmas sweetheart.
You’ve got to give a little, take a little,
and let your poor heart break a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.
You’ve got to laugh a little, cry a little,
until the clouds roll by a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.
As long as there’s the two of us,
we’ve got the world and all it’s charms.
And when the world is through with us,
we’ve got each other’s arms.
You’ve got to win a little, lose a little,
yes, and always have the blues a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.
[Benny Goodman with Helen Ward, 1936]
Coming Home to Story 