What Love, Actually nails, actually

Take your humbugs elsewhere, Scrooges.

I have a complicated relationship with Love, Actually. When it dropped 20 years ago, it had the frankly incredible power to make me cry if I heard a single chord of the score. (“Glasgow Love Theme,” you bastard.) A decade later, Lindy West’s iconic essay punctured the charm and romance of the thing, leaving only the thoughtless misogyny that plagues a lot of romcoms. In the last five years, though, I’ve somehow swung back around to finding this movie irresistible. So if you’d like to read something that reminds you of all the things you don’t like about Love, Actually, the entire rest of the internet has your back. As for me, I want to talk about the one thing I think makes this movie soar where other ensemble rom coms thud: the casting.

All romcoms live and die by the central performances. If the couple feels right to us as an audience, we’re willing to suspend our disbelief for a lot. And most romcoms have the luxury of an entire movie to convince the audience that the couple feels right. But ensembromcoms* have way less time and way more couples to sell us on. They need a shortcut, and Love, Actually’s shortcut is its pitch-perfect casting. At least half of the actors had a strong pre-existing relationship with the 2003 audience. For the plot lines that get the most screen time, we’ve got people playing perfectly to type, people playing perfectly against type, and everyone committing the perfect amount in a very British way.

*patent pending

• Hugh Grant, arguably the biggest star of the film when it first came out. The man who (on screen, at least) can’t help but be sincere, even as his own sincerity makes him wince. You need his light touch to make his more territorial behavior more palatable.

• Martine McCutcheon, my darling, my dream, my boat. Thanks to her four-year run on the English soap opera juggernaut Eastenders, Martine was one of the most beloved actors in the U.K. She had also very publicly struggled with her body image and how she felt about her weight, a struggle that unfortunately continues to this day; which is part of why Natalie’s weight is a running theme of her plot line. We are supposed to object every time someone calls Natalie fat. Unfortunately, the fatphobia everywhere else in the movie rather muddles that point.

Hugh Grant here perfectly representing how I would react if I got caught kissing Martine McCutcheon.

• Colin Firth, most famous in 2003 for a romantic drama, second-most famous for a romcom based on his most famous romantic drama. Most crucially, he was typically playing irresistibly stoic, whereas in Love, Actually he’s playing irresistibly silly. There’s nothing like a famously stern man turning out to be a total softy when he’s in love, and nothing like seeing Colin Firth send up his watershed wet-in-a-pond scene.

Mr. Darcy, eat your heart out.

• Emma Thompson, unimpeachably lovable, especially to the Shakespeare and/or Austen fans who compose a significant chunk of this movie’s audience. She is as witty, charming, and dynamic as we all hope we are. And we would kill anyone who made her cry, directly or indirectly.

• Alan Rickman, the man with the impossibly sexy voice and wry sense of humour, who we like, but sense we cannot trust. The first time you see the reveal that not only does he have a wife, but his wife is Emma Thompson, it’s more a disappointment than a shock.

Is Emma Thompson the kind of Joni Mitchell fan who wouldn’t already have this Joni Mitchell record?

• Liam Neeson, up to this point, an exclusively dramatic actor-slash-sex symbol for the moody girls. In Love, Actually, he’s playing the heaviest role in this absolute cream puff of a movie—the widower trying to shepherd his orphaned step-son through his first love. He nails the drama of it, as you’d expect; but he is also delightfully incongruous when saying things like “we need Kate, and we need Leo, and we need ‘em now.”

Meanwhile, that’s too cute to be a human boy. That’s a ladybug.

• Keira Knightley, who was right in the middle of a massive hot streak, thanks to Bend it Like Beckham and The Pirates of the Caribbean. This role really just called for an uncomplicated megawatt beam of charisma, and in 2003, nobody was doing that better than Keira.

  

  Who else could our self-loathing 2003 selves have forgiven for saying that, so smugly and so correctly?

  With these stars locked in, the other roles could go to relative wildcards, some of whom were at the early stages of their British John Krasinski career arc. Meanwhile, American ensembromcoms learned the wrong lessons from Love, Actually’s success. The trick isn’t just star power. Like, having Jennifer Garner and Jessica Biel in the same scene should have an impact on how we feel about the movie beyond “oh wow, they’re both in there.” But they don’t have specific personas, they’re just famous actors. That to me is why nobody is still thinking about Valentine’s Day, or bothering to write takedowns of New Year’s Eve. Hate it or love it, Love, Actually has real staying power.