Love Actually

Love Actually

2003

Director: Richard Curtis

Writer: Richard Curtis

123 Minutes

First-time director Richard Curtis loves love. He is famous for writing such films as Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. For his next project, Curtis took long walks on his vacation in Bali and would come up with a new story everyday.

Those stories eventually became Love Actually.

Love Actually has an ensemble cast, including Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Hugh Grant, and Laura Linney, which their characters interact with each other revolving around the theme of love. You have forbidden love, erotic love, hopeless-romantic love, lost love, brotherly love, young love, etc.

Then Curtis added Christmas into the mix. It’s just…unfair.

Each of these characters has highs, lows, midpoints, low-points, and climatic scenes about love. But in the end, all they wanted for Christmas was you.

In the scene above, Sam (Thomas Sangster) has been in love with Joanna (Olivia Olson) for the entire film. It’s the reason he is not sad about his mother’s death. It’s the reason he learned to play drums. It’s the reason for living.

Though we haven’t met Joanna until this scene, we know she’s one in a million. When the lights dim on the Christmas pageant and the majority of characters are present in the audience, Joanna takes stage.

The opening to her song, which she sings a cappella, is breathtaking. The characters are stunned. The audience is stunned. But we now see why Sam loves his girl.

But it’s the song: All I Want For Christmas is You.

It’s the meaning of the film. It’s why we love this film. We all want to be with the ones we love at Christmas - whether it be friends, family, new lovers, old lovers, or someone you met that day as a naked body double on a film set.

Love and Christmas. Like I said, unfair.

In the end, there were so many moments in this film that you walk away saying, “…that was great.” It’s because Love Actually is a great film. You have Colin traveling to Wisconsin to find American girls. The Prime Minister kissing Natalie in front an entire audience. Mr. Bean. Billy Mack. Billy Bob. You have lovers learning languages. Candid shots of real people at Heathrow Airport. And you have a man standing in front of his love with nothing but written cards and false hope.

But there is love. In life, that might be all you need. And at Christmas, that’s all you want.