Love Actually at 20: the definitive storyline ranking

Fuck wank bugger shitting arse head and hole! It's Christmas!

Oh my christ, Love Actually is 20. My boyfriend Alex (degree in film) and I (opinionated blogger with bad taste) went along to an anniversary screening at Filmhallen last week and honestly? It’s aged better than we thought. I didn’t even cry, which I usually do multiple times. Maybe I’m growing up, maybe I’m just dead inside. Who knows. Anyway, I graciously invited Alex onto the blog, please enjoy our detailed ranking and analysis of all the storylines of the most British Christmas film ever made.

First of all, refresh your mems with this incredibly detailed diagram:

10. Colin and the Americans

C: As much as I have a soft spot for Colin and a deep respect for the casting of the hotties, this storyline is one dimensional and a bit silly. Fun? Yes. Heartwarming? Not really. Is it love? Absolutely not. There is also probably more truth to it than we’d like to admit, and not because idiots from Basildon with “cute British accents” are sexy, but because Americans are very easily impressed by that sort of thing.

A: Do you think January Jones and Jason Sudeikis, who briefly dated, have ever spoken about how Olivia Wilde left him for Harry Styles? Why Jones never won any awards for her portrayal of Betty Draper in Mad Men? Why do I have so much useless information in my head about people who earn more money than God and who don’t care if I live or die? At some point, this was about Love Actually. 

As someone who’s dated Americans, I can confirm that yes, it kind of is this easy to get them to fall in love with you. But in the case of this film, the culture clash was done way better in Curtis’s previous Notting Hill, and as fun as it is seeing great actors getting their start in such pulpy roles, you’re better off with Mad Men, or watching Denise Richards’ villainous turn in Drop Dead Gorgeous. ‘Murica!

[disclaimer: Celeste has never dated Americans because she has standards]

9. Juliet, Peter, and Mark

C: Jesus Christ these three. Peter, the husband, has a total of about three lines in the whole film. Keira Knightley as Juliet is marvellously charming and beautiful and that’s her entire role. Fine. Now what the hell is Mark’s problem? If you have the hots for your best mate’s wife maybe being a total cunt to her - to the point where everyone is acutely aware of it - isn’t the best approach? Still, it’s a better approach than declaring your love to her with a bunch of hand written signs and just hoping that she answers the door (lampooned in this video by comedians Horatio Gould and Andrew Kirwan, see below). And then Juliet snogs him anyway? Honestly, British people will do anything except talk to each other about their problems. 

A: Wedding flash mobs tread a very fine line. Observing one online, via a Facebook video posted by a high school acquaintance with whom you exchanged maybe three words, it’s enough to give you acid reflux. Actually witnessing one, as I did in 2019, unfortunately does bring you to joyous tears. 

This would likely have been the case if I was at Julia and Peter’s wedding, but this is about as much credit as I can give to Love Actually’s love triangle. It clearly doesn’t deserve to be one of the most-memed moments from the film, such that even Boris Johnson once gave it a go. He has had more lovers than there are cast members in this film, mind.

8. Jack and Judy

C: This is actually one of my favourite storylines but for the purposes of this blog post I have to accept that it’s not particularly interesting. It’s more that seeing Stacey from Gavin and Stacey and the now extremely famous Martin Freeman be sex scene body doubles - in the nip! - is very amusing to me. Even more so when Martin Freeman was cast in The Hobbit and online Tolkein fans discovered gifs of him fondling Joanna Page’s tits. Superb. But like Colin, not a huge amount of depth. Just cute ya know.

A: Leave it to the sex body doubles to have the most cringe-inducing sappy scene in the film. It’s an inherently funny concept that Brad Pitt has a British nude double - for a largely secular society, we’re so averse to talking about sex that we might as well be Mormons. Of all the storylines, this is the one I can see being spun out into a show or film of its own. Just doing nude scenes in increasingly wild situations, like in zero gravity or on the back of a horse. Or in the background of The Hobbit. 

7. Rufus

C: A dark horse of a character yet vital, pivotal, essential to two of the plots - and the most famous instance of gift wrapping ever portrayed in any medium. Rufus plants the seed that leads Karen to discovering that her husband is buying expensive jewellery for another woman, and allows Sam, only a wee slim nipper, to bolt through Heathrow airport to declare his love for the coolest girl in school. Maximum respect for a man who is wearing a full pinstripe suit with overcoat, hat, leather gloves, and briefcase to the airport, and communicates almost entirely through the medium of eyebrow wiggles. We don’t deserve Rowan Atkinson.

A: I am abstaining from this part of the ranking, partly because the only thing Rufus shows any love for is fastidiousness, and also because Rowan Atkinson stole James Acaster’s girlfriend. How could you, Mr Bean? 

6. Daniel, Sam, Joanna, and Carol

C: I know what you’re thinking - why is this storyline so far down the list? Apologies to Liam Neeson fans but it’s baby Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Sam who is the star of one for me. How can one be so young, so sincere, so wise, and learn to play the drums passive-aggressively in under three weeks? But I digress. I find this storyline a bit underwhelming because the whole notion of Daniel’s on-screen wife being dead is sort of forgotten the minute that his stepson Sam declares his love for a girl in his class he’s never even spoken to. The Claudia Schiffer gag is quite funny but it’s just a gag. I know it’s because the plot must moveth on but the grief of Daniel’s wife and Sam’s mother dying is only really felt by Daniel, who is told to stop being such a bloody wimp by his mate Karen - who looks quite uncannily like Natasha Richarson, Liam Neeson’s offscreen wife who died a few years ago. Awks.

A: I’ve watched Love Actually many times in many different places. Crowded around my portable DVD player on a Young Carers holiday (which dates this anecdote), waiting for the nude body double scenes. At 3am on New Year’s Day, winding down from the maddest party of my young life that featured a number of minor YouTube celebrities.  

One cute detail I’d somehow never noticed before seeing it on the big screen is when Sammy sticks out his index finger after the fateful meeting with Joanna, and one of her sparkly hair threads is wrapped around it. No wonder he looks so chuffed! 

I think the point of Sammy’s lovelorn mission is that it’s a welcome escape for both him and Daniel, a lesson that love informs grief but is also much stronger than it. That men too often grieve alone because they think they have to, even if your friends say “No one will shag you if you go round crying all the time” which, incidentally, is a line that will come to haunt Emma Thompson’s Karen later. 

5. Billy Mack and Joe

C: Bill Nighy is so good at playing a washed up rockstar that it’s almost hard to believe that he’s not like that in real life and rather a respected Oscar-nominated serious stage and screen actor. I like this storyline because it’s one of the few that isn’t about romantic love or sex, but about an almost-friendship. Years of living hard and fast has left Billy Mack with no-one (not even some illegitimate children, apparently) to love but his manager Joe, “the ugliest man in the world”. And they do love each other, in a sort of awkward man-on-man stiff upper lip sort of way that we do so well in Britain. A more postmodern reading might suggest that they are actually closeted, but I think Love Actually doesn’t have the complexity or multilayered-ness for that sort of thing. It’s 2003, after all. There are no theme lasagnas here.

A: There’s no way Bill Nighy hasn’t shagged Elton John though, right? When he reaches the top of the charts at Christmas, Elton is the first one to call. When I was trying to think who else from the world of rock and roll he might have in his phone, I first thought of Mick Jagger, who probably had a thing with Bowie, and then of Robbie Williams, who once described himself as “49% homosexual.” My point is, you rarely reach the heights of pop stardom in this country without sampling all the windows on the advent calendar, if you catch my drift. 

Nighy is the height of louche as Billy Mack. If you Google the word “gyrating,” it should just be pictures of his scenes in this film. This story also scores highly for me with the inclusion of the fictional Radio Watford, a radio station I would absolutely be sending mixtapes to in an attempt to secure a late-night show. “For all you lovers out there about to cross the Gap, here’s Sunn O)))...”

4. Jamie and Aurelia

C: It’s Colin Firth doing what he does best, which is being Mr. Darcy and only being Mr. Darcy. Jamie catches his brother shagging his wife and does the mature thing - run off to the south of France to ponder and write a crime novel on an old typewriter. He gets a new housekeeper - adorable Portuguese girl-next-door Aurelia, who cannot speak a word of English - and they awkwardly coexist as she collects his coffee mugs and he drives her home at the end of the day. This is a Richard Curtis film so naturally the two fall in love despite the language barrier. Once his stay in France is over, Jamie does some pre-Duolingo language learning, bails on his family Christmas, and returns to the bit of the south of France’s Little Portugal to declare his love for Aurelia. This storyline would be ranked lower would it not have been for 1. The person who did the subtitling 2. Aurelia’s sister, Miss Dunkin’ Donut 2003, and literally everything she says. They let Colin Firth be silly and it paid off.

A: Colin Firth picks up the phone. It’s Richard Curtis. Richard says “Colin, darling! Loved you in Pride and Prejudice. And Bridget Jones, as a matter of fact. Do you fancy doing the Darcy routine once more? Just for old times’ sake? Timid love interest, bucolic scenery, the works.” Colin agrees. “For Christ’s sake, just don’t make me get wet again. It was cold enough the first two times.” AND THEN imagine him reading the script for this movie. Falling into a body of water for a woman not once, not twice, but three times. Please. Someone help him. He is so damp.

3. Natalie and The Prime Minister

C: Look, this entire film is a New Labour fantasy and I’m ok with it. One must remember that 2003 was a pretty hopeful and prosperous time, and if you close your eyes and really concentrate, you might be able to pretend that times are simple again. The downside of this technique is that, pastiched side by side like this, one is reminded that things haven’t always been this terrible and we weren’t just kidding ourselves. Whoops.

Freshly elected PM David and Cockney reformed urchin with aspirations Natalie are two awkward weirdos on their first day at work and charm the pants off each other, with the Prime Minister even offering to have Natalie’s shitty ex assassinated. After the president of the USA (who is actually really fit?? Am I getting old enough to fancy Billy Bob Thornton??) comes to visit and tries it on with Natalie, David is emboldened to make one of the finest speeches in British political history, but also to move Natalie to another department because he is just too tempted by her. After she sends a nice card, he realises the error of his ways and goes knocking door to door in Wandsworth looking for his one true love. It is at this point that we learn that his bodyguard Gavin has a beautiful rich baritone voice singing Old King Wenceslas. David and Natalie patch it up in the back of the car with a child dressed as an octopus and then get caught smooching at the Christmas concert at the local primary school. All is well. Ok, maybe not all, because the fat shaming in this storyline has not aged well but frankly was tame by the standards of the time. We can’t fault the dance though. Modern politicians could never. That’s obviously the worst thing that has happened to British politics in the last two decades.

A: Politicians have sex. This is a fact we have been faced with on an entirely too regular basis over the years - there’s the Chris Pinchers of this world, and some MPs who still can’t legally be named but still sit on the benches in the House of Commons, hiding in plain sight. They have affairs with each other, they use parliamentary bars as their own personal bordellos. Despite all this, you never get a sense that politicians fuck. Not so with Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister, who fucks more than his clear real-life analogue, Tony Blair, ever could. No matter what Cherie says. After the end credits roll, there’s no room in Downing Street these two won’t have touched. To be that portrait of Maggie… 

Taking place as it does in that beautiful sweet spot before Blair’s popularity started to decline, when those sexy days of 1997 still felt fresh, politics could be sexy, and not feel akin to a slow trudge to neoliberal monotony, with all the bedside manner of sharting yourself at a wake. 

And it’s a time capsule in other ways. Two years after Love Actually, we got the first series of How To Look Good Naked, which asked the bold question, what if we told every woman in Britain she was too fat? That caustic angle from the Blair years is no less present in Martine McCutcheon’s Natalie. Nowadays we’re a bit closer to acknowledging that she has the kind of body that Spartans used to go to war over, but here she’s the butt (sorry) of jokes from not just her thinner co-workers, but her own family. At the time even Doctor Who was telling stories in which fat people were actually warmongering aliens hiding in plain sight. A strange anachronism, in what’s otherwise one of the film’s sweeter stories. 

2. Sarah, Karl, and Michael

C: When I was younger and more heartless, I used to hate this storyline. It bothered me so much that Sarah wouldn’t just turn her phone off and allow herself half an hour of joy hooking up with her mega crush. Now that I am older and wiser, I have a greater appreciation its prioritising of selfless family love over a bit of lust with sexy Karl. Sarah’s only family is her brother Michael who lives in an adult social care facility for the mentally ill. He is deeply paranoid and prone to fits of rage, often lashing out at Sarah who is endlessly patient with him. The most unbearable, toe-curlingly awkward scene of the film is when Sarah and Karl go back to her place and start canoodling, only to be interrupted by several loud and piercing phone calls from Michael. Even though Karl tells her that not answering isn’t the end of the world (which is true), Sarah can’t bear to put someone before Michael and the hook up ends sadly and abruptly. It’s actually heart-wrenching. It’s a very beautiful portrayal of selflessness and sadness and I have a lot of time for it now. I hope Sarah found herself a new Karl.

A: Of all the actors here, Emma Thompson and Laura Linney are the strongest, exuding the kind of vulnerability that feels almost like it belongs in its own, separate film. Curtis has always mixed joy with earth-shattering pathos in his films - in About Time, even the ability to return to the past can’t save everyone. 

Without leaning too much on my personal experience of Sarah’s family dynamic, I’ll say that it felt authentic and not as cheap as it could have been. Carers always do have to put their lives on hold in place of things like relationships or work, because no alternative has ever been as important for them. When you love someone who is suffering, it’s never out of an expectation of something in return, and that commitment, like a compass always pointing to magnetic north, is palpable in Linney’s performance. 

1. Karen, Harry, and Mia

C: The most heartbreaking storyline of them all. Emma Thompson is somewhat unconvincingly frumped up as mum of two Karen and wife of Harry who is of course a graphic designer. They seem to be in a pretty bog standard middle aged middle England marriage and this all seemed fairly normal. This rewatch at 30 made me reconsider Harry and see him as an altogether more pathetic character than I realise - someone who leaves the bulk of domestic labour and parenting to his wife, and someone who doesn’t really understand her because he doesn’t think he needs to. These two have followed the classic heterosexual script of life and naturally this favours Harry, who gets to have a nice normal family life run entirely by Karen. 

Karen graciously accepts this - probably because that’s the way things were - until she discovers a hideous beautiful gold necklace tucked into the pocket of Harry’s coat. When she picks out an early Christmas present from under the tree that is the same size and shape as the box the necklace came in, only to discover that it’s a Joni Mitchell record, we witness the most understated heartbreak as Karen stands there, alone, in their marital bedroom, knowing that this is a turning point that can’t be reversed. She boldly and delicately confronts Harry about this at the school Christmas concert, which to his credit Harry immediately admits to and accepts that he has done something bad.

Harry: Oh, God. I am so in the wrong. The classic fool!

Karen:  [voice breaking]  Yes, but you've also made a fool out of me, and you've made the life I lead foolish, too!

It’s not even as if Harry is deliberately looking for a spot of philandering, but the philandering simply presented itself and he was excited at the thought of Mia, his young and frankly terrifying secretary, being interested in him. Alex punched me in the arm several times during the screening because I was yelling “whore!” in the cinema every time Mia appeared on screen. I will not apologise - she is awful. Look, we all fancy Alan Rickman, but going after a clearly married man who will feel flattered by the attention is a dick move. She knows exactly what she is doing.

Would Harry have gone looking for excitement himself? Probably not, to be honest. He just needed coaxing and he was too weak to stop it from happening and too selfish to realise the repercussions. However, we don’t see Harry buying the necklace onscreen, which means he went back to get it. So maybe there’s more intentionality there than I’m giving him credit for. Maybe he’s just a bastard. It’s unclear in the epilogue what the long term consequences are, but Karen simply has to push on and keep up the facade of normal life, while Harry flounders around trying to figure out where he fits into their family. It’s terribly sad, because the very lack of intentionality and decisiveness leaves everyone confused and irreversibly damaged. It’s 2003 so you know they’re not going to therapy to try and do some salvaging.

The jury is out regarding what Harry actually got up to with Mia. Some people are certain that some bonking happened. I, an intellectual, think this was just some sort of overexcitement on Harry’s part and it was just a necklace and hope, not much else. Though Emma Freud (the director’s wife) claims that they did actually have an affair. Nooooooooooo.

A: As a kid, you just don’t get it. Love is as simple as a chase through an airport. Your parents are in love, and that’s how you showed up. Then you grow up, and a CD isn’t just a CD, a necklace isn’t just a necklace, and all it takes is a secretary with a menacing bob to tear down the whole facade.  

Richard Curtis, well on his way to 50 when Love Actually came out and a new father, would have known the intricacies of staid, middle-class marriage intimately, regardless of how autobiographical this particular story is. It’s a new millennium and your generation feels increasingly lost, while the future is sexy and exciting - but, for Harry, with that excitement comes danger. 

Alan Rickman is so witheringly camp that it’s almost implausible for him to be interested in Mia at all. You almost want him to find new happiness with Karl, or with Andrew Lincoln’s Mark. Imagine it - Mark unlearns his creeping fascination with his best friend’s wife, and Harry finds himself in a more honest way than what we actually see here. The truth is, a gayer man would know exactly what sort of necklace would suit the sexy secretary. 

I actually find Emma Thompson’s constant frazzle eminently believable. She’s a woman swept from one burden of motherhood to another, never stopping to have time for herself - until she does. A sadness that gets swept up in David and Natalie’s grand finale at the school concert is that Karen believes that her brother has come specifically for her, and not because Natalie knows the secret entrance, with every character in the film tied together through cosmic coincidence - even Rufus. 

Amid the joy of the final scene at Heathrow’s Arrivals hall, Harry and Karen’s reunion is muted, perfunctory - “I’m fine. I’m fine!” - because they have to be. Love isn’t as simple as a chase through an airport, all of the time. It’s meeting at one, while dragging your baggage, and moving on as best you can. 

Merry Christmas?