In defense of love actually 20 years later

It only lasted a few years Real love Become part of the DNA of this country. Trumpets sound at a community wedding; timeless lines, from “I look good” to “It’s a cinnamon stick, sir”; a child in an octopus costume sandwiched in the back seat between two lovers; Joni Mitchell teaches “how to feel your cold Englishwoman.” All these moments are firmly entrenched in our collective memory.

But in the twenty years since then Real love While it remains a staple in every British household’s DVD cupboard and was shown almost every night on ITV2 from October 31 to January 3, it was also torn to shreds. You know, it was a different time – and the cozy, chic, sweet world of Richard Curtis is no longer ignored. real love, The criticism is heteronormative, unrealistic and misogynistic.. Curtis’s own daughter Scarlett criticized the film this year for jokes about Martine McCutcheon’s character Natalie’s weight and the “inappropriate boss behavior” Grant displayed towards her. In 2013, on the 10th film^e To mark the anniversary, critic Lindy West wrote a commentary blog post. Jezebel about re-watching the film – a passage with lines like “This whole film is just men doing things” and pithy observations about how Real loveThe woman’s “greatest moral lesson” was: “The less a woman says, the more attractive she is.” Real love has been ridiculed over the years as an inconsequential waste.

So, I take on the difficult task of protecting him. Because twenty years later Real love remains a classic to take with you every Christmas. And isn’t it time to think not only about the guilt of this film, but also about the enjoyment of it?

Real love to paraphrase Billy Mac’s manager Joe in the film’s opening scene, it’s “golden shit.” This is a film that is relentlessly silly, stimulating with its wide range of characters and has just the right amount of emotion. Like many of my generation, I watched it obsessively between 2007 and 2011, and I’m happy to say I’ve watched it at least once a year since then.

Unless your family is offended by the words “b***”, “c***”, “asshole”, “shit”, “ass”, “fuck” or “piss” (Curtis should just check this out). it’s his privilege to draw the line at “c***”) Real loveas it is, completely without controversial topics, is a relatively safe choice for a 4pm Christmas celebration, but escapism is only part of its appeal. On the other side of the same coin, themes of heartbreak, heartbreak, marriage, unrequited love and friendship – all the things we usually think about during the annual Christmas blues – are safely addressed and balanced out with comforting feelings. Pictures and distracting jokes.

“The real world is not always safe!” I hear you say. “Art is meant to comfort the anxious and disturb those who are comfortable!” Okay, sometimes “unsettling” means “being in touch with some of the core experiences of being human,” and it’s “comforting” to see them sandwiched between clips to which Colin (Kris Marshall) yells that he’s “big.” Nob,” or Billy Mac (Bill Nighy), who tells us not to buy drugs because when you “become a pop star, they get them for free,” or Harry (Alan Rickman), who says through gritted teeth, “Buy them.” their”. guacamole in large quantities.” Or Karen (Emma Thompson) saying, “My terrible son Bernard.” When I feel comfortable enough to be interrupted, I’ll go back to Quentin Tarantino, thank you very much.

It’s scenes like Grant’s infamous boogie that make the film utterly ridiculous and make it worth endless re-watches. The idea of ​​”David running the country” or deciding literally every political issue while flirting with a portrait of Maggie Thatcher, distracting himself from his job as a sexy secretary and feeling “cool” after being elected president has become and sings Christmas. carols. The Wandsworth rapids are simply ridiculous. Well, spoiler alert: that’s the whole point. The hint is in “com”. We don’t watch films about the British constitution. We are watching a film about love. In fact.

And unlike most romantic comedies, which are mostly about relationships, from sweethearts to happily ever after, here we have multiple storylines that present different romantic challenges to different characters. It’s the madness and infatuation of the Prime Minister, and also, among other things, Daniel (Liam Neeson), who loses his wife Joanna and helps his son in his own romantic conquest; Sarah (Laura Linney) cares for her mentally ill brother; Jamie (Colin Firth) is betrayed; Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is in love with his best friend’s wife (Keira Knightley); Harry and Karen’s marriage and his affair with his much younger assistant. They may be a little fleeting, but they touch on some of life’s most painful situations and realities; Curtis, as problematic as he is, leaves some issues unresolved, but romance, work romance, unrequited love, death, a language barrier and friendship in one film are not bad.

The film’s lack of serious work and politics helps give the film its emotional impact. Some viewers seem downright furious that we don’t know the characters’ entire lives because it distances them from the real world – but it doesn’t really matter what jobs people do. Alan Rickman’s character Harry is supposed to be the big dog at what appears to be a big charity, but no one can argue that we wouldn’t be even more interested if we knew the details of his G-cal. He goes to buy necklaces for his assistant Mia, who loves red underwear and always wears turtlenecks, while his pretty wife (Thompson) knows nothing. We don’t know exactly what his colleague Sarah (Linney) is up to, and guess what? I have nothing against. What we do know is that she’s hopelessly in love with Carl (Rodrigo Santoro), a fact that currently worries Sarah more than her job.

I’m not saying you won’t notice some hilarious and glaring inaccuracies when watching this movie. My personal favorite is when Firth’s character Jamie abandons all his belongings at his parents’ house for Christmas and then hops into a taxi with literally no belongings to fly to Portugal to publicly hit on the woman he’s dating and propose to her. marry. I never spoke. There is, of course, the much-derided scene in which Mark (Lincoln) declares his love for his best friend’s wife, Juliet (18-year-old Knightley), on his doorstep in front of a series of posters (I checked and saw in 2003 that they had text on them messages). There are constant references to Natalie’s weight that straddle the line between “knowledgeable” and “cruel.”

What am I I am That being said, despite all this, there is a scene where Sarah finally brings Karl back to her apartment but is repeatedly interrupted by calls from her sick brother, and a scene where Karen finds out that Harry is having an affair and cries alone. in her family bedroom, listening to a Joni Mitchell CD that she hoped would be a gold chain. There are jokes about the airing of the ridiculously sexist music video for Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love and how “eight is a lot of legs, David”, as well as self-aware references to the film’s pantomime storylines: “Father supports it, Aurelia as a slave “Sell to this Englishman,” says Aurelia’s sister in Portuguese, as the entire bewildered village follows poor Jamie down the road.

And basically what I’m trying to say is that to declare, as West did in 2013, that this movie no longer exists because “IT’S NOT HOW THINGS WORK” would be tantamount to condemning the movie. Cinderella Because there are no fairy godmothers, and mice can’t talk. Like fairy tales, romantic comedies have their time and place. They are highly processed, emotionally draining carbohydrate junk. That’s why they go so well with pizza. AND Real loveself-proclaimed “ultimate romantic comedy” this is not a film we should use as a moral compass or a realistic portrayal of society as a whole. But twenty years later, we’re still watching the film because Curtis’s cozy world, like fairy tales, is real enough to make us feel something.