My wife and I only watch two holiday movies—A CHRISTMAS STORY (we have it on for nearly 24 hours and watch much of it more than once), and LOVE ACTUALLY. (We watch our favorite parts of this year-around, whenever it’s on.) The New York Times gives it a snide comment in its TV schedule—I think they take it too seriously. While not realizing its conglomeration of many related narrative bits about human relations, it’s in part realistic, part stylized, and part cartoon-like in its integrated pieces of its somewhat unrealistic/idealized fragments. It shouldn’t be criticized for its foolish parts. The film is not realistic–in its many related pieces, it’s a glittery, collective metaphor.

A Christmas party joining several of the narrative streams takes place in an art gallery ironically displaying gigantic photos of black and white naked body parts. One might say they are bizarre, outsized exaggerations on the idea of sex/love. Some of the other episodes also weave a couple of the varied love-characters.

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SOFT CORE

Actor and actress meet in filming a faked sex scene for a soft-core film. Although they are shy performing the sham-love scenes, by film’s end they actually fall in love.

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OBSESSION

A fellow is obsessed with his best friend’s fiancé-then-wife, but he realizes he has to get over it, which he does, comically, with a series of signs he shows her.

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BRO-LOVE

Actor Bill Nighy, aging rock star, performs the song, “Christmas Is All Around,” but in rehearsal, ironically, he keeps mistakenly singing, “I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes, love is all around me….” It’s the love all around him that he eventually recognizes–he returns early from a party, telling his long-time male manager that he has had an epiphany, realizing that the love of his life is, indeed him, his associate and friend. The manager momentarily confuses this with homosexual love, but Nighy expresses to him that his newly expressed love is not homosexual but for the human being with whom he has spent the best parts of his life. (Thus, the film, in this denial of homosexual love, neglects to positively address this issue.)

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SIBLING-LOVE

Woman who’s enamored with fellow office worker, is frustrated by her sibling-love for her mentally disturbed brother. Sadly (and maybe unnecessarily–is it really an either-or decision?), she rejects the office-worker in favor of her love/devotion to her brother.

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ILLICIT “LOVE”

Man married with kids nearly seduced by scheming office worker, whom he gives a gold-heart necklace. His wife discovers it and asks whether it’s just a gift or “love.” (He has given his wife a CD album of her favorite singer, Joni Mitchel—known for her subtle, unexpected lyrics about human feelings and relationships, including love.)  He expresses that he’s been guilty of middle-aged foolishness and hopes she can understand. As the film ends with them meeting at the airport arrival room, she says to him that she is “fine”—which is too perfunctory—so she repeats “fine,” the repetition of which indicates that their loving relationship they’ve had all these years is indeed secure.

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SEX-NOT-LOVE OBSESSED

A young English fellow, frustrated at not finding an English woman for himself, travels to America where he know he will find not love but sex. This is the most unrealistic fantasy story, as he encounters, has sex with, and brings back to England, several of the most erotically provocative young women.

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PUPPY LOVE

Man grieves for dead wife whom he loved but never told her so enough. His pre-teenage stepson is in puppy love with a schoolmate girl. His step-father and he conspire to successfully express his feelings—at which point the father and son, for the first time expressing their love in words, call each other “son,” and “father.” (The father, earlier, still grieving for his dead wife, jokingly comments that he’s waiting to encounter gorgeous movie star, Claudia Schiffer—and, unrealistically, he bumps into a parent of one of his step-son’s classmates—who is played by Claudia Schiffer!)

Toward the film’s end, in a Christmas school musical, the girl sings “All I Want for Christmas is You,” as she points toward the boy, then toward others in the audience, thus embracing the feeling of love as an inclusive feeling, which, indeed, is the overarching theme of the film.

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TRUE OFFICE LOVE

Actor Hugh Grant, as England’s new prime minister, is enamored of an assistant, but rejects her out of unfounded jealousy. When he receives a Christmas card from her expressing love, he realizes that he has erroneously rejected her, and on Christmas Eve he goes searching for her home. Knocking on every door on the street, he is told by the office seductress, the false love-schemer from a different episode, that–in ironic twist–the true love of his life lives right next door.

They have what they believe is their first, secret kiss, behind the scenes of the children’s Christmas festivities—as the song, “All I Want for Christmas is You” ends, the background scenery parts, and they are revealed to the audience, kissing in the glaring spotlight—expressing their love for all to see.

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JUST IN CASES LOVE

Actor Colin Firth, an aspiring English writer hires a young Portuguese housekeeper. They can’t speak each other’s language, but interact on a daily basis in a way that–not quite to each other’s realization–is burgeoning love. As the writer is leaving for Christmas at home, they sadly part, but somehow recognize what they’re losing.

On Christmas Eve, acting on the truth, he takes a flight, and is taken to the restaurant where she works as a valued waitress. In a tear-inducing and most marvelous scene in the movie, he looks up to her on the balcony where she is serving—she comes to the balcony railing, and in a scene reminiscent of “Romeo and Juliet,” from below he proposes to her in his amusingly stilted Portuguese (which he has been studying).

He tells her that he fears he is being silly and she will not accept—but it’s Christmas…. In her stilted English (which she has been studying) she replies, “Thank you. That will be nice. Yes be my answer.” She has been studying English, as she says, “Just in cases.”

As the film and her words suggest,

love can come in many ways and many forms,

so we should be prepared for it, just in cases.

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“Love Actually” is rather more unreal than “When Harry Met Sally,” “Notting Hill,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but it’s a far more expansive collage in its theme. As a glorious, fabulous fabrication, the film ends with numerous characters from many of the diverse stories comingeling  to meet their loves in an airport arrival room, where loving embraces ensue. And to make the shining Christmas fantasy theme clear, the embraces of those we’ve come to know blend into more—and then more–and more–and more multi-images of many people meeting and embracing—transforming into a subtle but undeniable heart.

I wonder if, while the film was in production,

 someone involved in it was asked,

 “What’s this disjointed thing all about?”

and the response was,

“It’s about love, actually.”

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